In Beauty, the Design Triennial Exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt in New York, curators Andrea Lipps and Ellen Lupton define “ethereal” as it relates to design:

Designers create forms that shape space, time, light, or air, sometimes defying permanence and weight in favor of ephemeral or fleeting effects. An object or building might exist in the space between or the space left behind more than in the thing itself.

Now, try substituting “pizza bakers” for “designers” in Lipps and Lupton’s first sentence and “a pizza” for “an object” in their second sentence and see how it reads:

The artistry of Franco Pepe, Gabriele Bonci, Ciro Salvo and other master pizzaioli is found not just in the thing we eat but also in the air, the bubbles, the spaces between.

photo by Luciano Furia

Before Crossrail construction extinguished its brick oven and closed it for business, Spaccanapoli, off Oxford Street, was the most famous London pizzeria. In Naples. It seemed that half the clientele was visiting the UK from Southern Italy. Many had heard that Peppe, its head pizzaiolo, had worked back home at Trianon and had established the house style for his colleagues and successors at Spaccanapoli. Peppe tutored both Paolo and Nicola, two pizzaioli who moved to sister restaurant Santoré and brought their incredibly light touch with them after Spaccanapoli was forced to close.

Santoré’s baked pizzas, with their puffy cornicione, are weightless – in the very best sense of the word. Owner Mimo (no one calls him Dominico) Savarese wouldn’t have it any other way.

That the Spaccanapoli spirit lives on in Clerkenwell should be reason enough to come celebrate on the 23rd of March. But Mimo promises to make this #PizzaTuesday extra special by featuring the signature rotolo rustica – rolled pizza filled with three cheeses and aubergine – on top of a tasting of 4 pizza varieties, including a truly classic Margherita. Other surprise additions to the menu are planned.

Everyone will have the opportunity to visit the pizza kitchen, feel the heat of the oven, meet Paolo or Nicola and maybe investigate if the Trianon connection is true. But in the end that shouldn’t matter when the pizza and pizzeria, though located at London’s Exmouth Market, are so very close to Naples.

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