Our car climbs the mountainous roads above the northern Italian spa town of Salsomaggiore. It is late March, and we have a job to do. I’ve convinced my three teammates—Tony, Bruno, and Justin—to accompany me on my quest for tartufi bianchetti, Italian spring truffles. The bianchetti aren’t the hardest truffle to find in all of Italy, or the most fragrant, but they are the best at this time of year because they’re fresh. By now, the white truffles have lost their intensity, and the blacks, all of their flavor. I need the bianchetto to make an award-winning entry for the 2008 World Pizza Championship, and these elegant truffles, paired with sweet Maine diver scallops, are perfect partners. The judges will be looking for taste, innovation, and execution. If I can find the truffle guy, I’ll nail the championship.
The town of Salsomaggiore Terme, located in the Parma region of Emilia-Romagna, dates from the time the Etruscans first found mineral springs nestled in this snug valley. Today, people come for massages and bathe in the brown stink of the healing egg water, thanks to Benito Mussolini, the fortieth prime minister of Italy, who built a palatial building around the springs, called the Berzieri Spa. The waters are famed for healing.
But I am a pizza man with just one purpose: to win first place, USA, at this year’s competition. Normally, I confine myself to my small pizzeria in Athens, Ohio, and suffer no illusions as to my business’s place in a small college town: customers are locals and college kids; business is brisk until 4:00 A.M.; volume is high and profit is small. My customers love my products, and I’m happy but not complacent. I know the next three days won’t bring me any fame, but just maybe they’ll bring some validation that even a small guy can win sometimes.
The championships are held annually in a huge stadium just outside Salsomaggiore. Blooming flowers and squawking pheasants on the steep, vine-covered slope outside the building belie the intense human conflict within. This year I’m entering four pizzas: scallop and truffle pizza in the Pizza Classico category; spinach, feta, chicken, and sun-dried tomato pizza in the Pan Style category; fresh mozzarella with basil and San Marzano tomatoes in the Neapolitan category; and in Non Gluten, a new category, an onion-linguine and sweet potato orecchiette-topped pizza with dough made from rice and garbanzo-bean flour. All culinary scores are figured from 800 as perfect, with each contestant rated by cooking prowess, sanitation, presentation, taste, and knowledge of the pizza. From prior year competitions, I have also learned the unwritten rules: look Italian, cook the Italian way, make your presentation short, have confidence and a pinch of arrogance. My show of detached condescension must make the judges think I am the most knowledgeable pizza maker ever, and, as a gift, I am going to turn them on to the best pizza they’ve ever had. Once I get my truffles, that is.
We see the worn sign in front, Ristorante Al Tartufo, flickering across the white gravel parking lot, and we turn, circling to the back of the building. Tony Gemignani, founder and president of our American team, leans across the front seat to get a better look at the building, dark bangs falling across his forehead. He has just driven Justin Wadstein, Bruno di Fabio, and me on this four-hour expedition. He is probably weary from the winding roads and the jetlag, but Tony looks calm, as usual, and intense.
“We’re here, I think.” A quick smile accompanies his classically handsome Italian looks and puts us all at ease. Tony is an international legend in the pizza industry. With his brother Frank, he owns Pisano’s Pizzeria in Castro Valley, California. He has won more acrobatic and culinary awards for pizza than any other person in this country and probably the world. Tony and Bruno recently opened Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, a successful pizza school and pizzeria in San Francisco. Tony has already driven us around to purchase radicchio, zucchini flowers, and broccoli rabe. These truffle guys are our last stop.
“So, John,” Bruno says to me. “This is the place with your amazing truffle guy, huh?” Bruno beams. He can’t help himself. There on the gravel he looks like an actor about to go on stage. Both he and Tony live for strange new situations; after hearing of my last visit to the truffle guy in 2006, they had to see for themselves.
Just like last time, the quest began with creepiness, a James Bond moment by the hotel front desk when we asked for directions to the truffle guy’s restaurant. Two men in pressed blue suits asked why we wanted these truffles and how we knew of the truffle guy. It seemed more like an impending drug deal than a stinky fungus inquiry. If we could get fresh truffle at the local stores, life would be simpler, but that’s not how it works in Italy.
Truffle hunters gather the bianchetto, also known as the Tuscan truffle, from January to March, from Tuscany north to this part of Emiglia-Romagna. Its lobes, unlike the round, sandpaper-like skins of the black truffle, look like bulbous bumps on a small animal brain thrown in the dirt. It’s tough to nail down the exact aroma and taste of the spring truffle: cheesy, woody, earthy, and garlicky are the usual adjectives. While not as aromatic as the white or black truffle, the bianchetto is particularly suited to pizza—at low, warm temperatures it gives off a mildly pungent aroma. Introducing strong flavors to a pizza can be disastrous. A great pizzaiolo (pizza dude) has to make sure that the competing flavors of bread, sauce, cheese, protein, and vegetable are compatible and not overpowered by another element.
Now I’m just moments away from a stash of bianchetti. I can almost smell them. But Justin turns and looks off into the dark green hills beyond the parking lot. “I’m not gonna get whacked for a truffle,” he says. “I’m staying in the car.” Justin is no coward. He’s a world-class pizza-dough-tossing acrobat who once tossed three rounds of pizza dough high into the air while jumping up and down on a soccer ball. When Justin won the World Pizza Championship of 2007, the crowd jumped out of their seats, screaming in adulation and surprise.
Bruno leans in toward Justin, who’s still sitting in the car. “Okay, Justin, this is the deal. If you hear some loud pops, then see me hauling ass to the van with a big bag of truffles and John’s and Tony’s brains splattered on my face, start the car, and we’ll be gone.” Bruno laughs his usual high, nasal guffaw and kicks the loose gravel. He then punches my arm and nods a “let’s go” toward the back of the restaurant. We crunch our way through the parking lot. The sunlight is waning now. Clouds moving in make the mottled and muted blue sky meld with the valley below.
The restaurant’s door is a huge slab of beaten, scratched wood that to my mind looks like a door to a gladiator ring. Tony, in the lead, stops to face me. “Hey, John, how do you know that this guy’s your buddy? This area was a Mussolini stronghold in World War II, and there’s still lots of ill will toward Americans. I’ve also heard of some strange deaths attributed to the truffle black market. It’s a big business here, taken very seriously. Why don’t you go in first and I’ll back you up?”
I hesitate. Perhaps I overstated how familiar I was with the truffle guy, having met him only once, and that was two years ago. What if Justin is right and the truffle mafia decides we’re interlopers?
Bruno chimes in with a chuckle. “Yeah, dude, we’re right behind you. Anything happens, we’ll be the first to run and get the cops or the ambulance.”
I stop at the threshold and sniff the air. “Smell that?” I ask.
“Porcini, cepes. Unmistakable. Food of the gods,” Tony mumbles. “You sure this is the place you visited last time?” My hands grip the near-mythical brass doorknob. I smile nervously and throw open the door.
I have indeed been here before. I’m transported back two years ago, to a late March night in the marble lobby of the Grand Hotel et de Milan in the heart of Salsomaggiore Terme. Feeling a little like Jack Nicholson at the start of The Shining, I had blurted out, “I need to find some truffles. Do you know where I can buy some?”
“Who wants to know?” a slender, elegant man in his mid-fifties asked. His perfectly pressed blue suit with white lapels was more suited to a movie than a hotel. He looked beyond me with such curiosity that I turned and looked myself. No one there.
“Follow me, please,” he said as he clicked his way across the marble, circling behind me and out the door. The lights of downtown and the disco across the street twinkled as we walked through a black-green garden filled with huge marble statues. The fence around it reminded me of a cemetery.
“My name is Giorgio.” He tapped a cigarette on his pack. “I can get you tartufi,” he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper. “It is . . . how do you say? Not simple.”
“Complicated,” I said.
“Yes.” Giorgio lit his cigarette and took a deep puff. He pulled out his card, wrote an address on it, and said, “Take a taxi, give him this address. When you get there, go in the back door. Ask for the owner of the restaurant and give him this card.” I looked down at the cursive Italian writing. The only word I could distinguish was the last one, tartufo.
As I walked away, Giorgio cautioned, “Be careful, Giovanni . . . John. And keep your hands out of your pockets.”
Thirty minutes later my cab reached the mountain restaurant. I walked across a parking lot under the yellow glare of its sign and opened a big wooden door—the same one I had just opened with Tony and Bruno behind me. The room was not well lit. Pale green walls showed splotches where the plaster had chipped off. Shelves all around held jars of unidentifiable brown things floating in liquid.
A dozen or so locals were bantering with their friends. Four old men at an old wooden tabletop played cards to my right. Middle-aged waitresses lounged and cackled at a small bar on the other side. I stepped into the middle of the room.
“Hi,” I blurted out to no one in particular. A drop of sweat trickled down the side of my face.
Everything stopped. The abruptness was so intense that it could only have been better choreographed if someone had taken a record player and scratched the needle hard: RRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIP. I looked around, my hands and brow sweaty. Even my brain seemed to sweat. All the faces were hard and expressionless. It was one of the longest silences I’ve experienced in my life. I looked down. “Oh shit,” I thought. There were my hands, in the pockets of my coat. The oldies at the card table had their hands under the table now. I removed my hands slowly.
“Buona sera.” A man appeared from behind a patterned curtain, arms outstretched in the clothesline position. He was over six feet tall, with graying, balding hair and a bushy unibrow held up in a “what do you want” look. He cracked his neck with a snap and cocked it to one side, expressing, in timeless guy language, “Gimme what you got, punk.”
“I came to get some truffles,” I squeaked, cursing myself for sounding like a little girl.
“Americano?” he asked.
“Yes, er, si,” I replied. “I need them for my pizza at the World Pizza Competition.”
“Who send you?” the tall man demanded.
“Giorgio, at the hotel.” I pulled out his card, trying to keep my hand steady.
A smile flashed across the guy’s face. It was like someone had put the needle back on the record. All was good, all was right, just a stupid Americano.
The tall man shook my hand. From the back room he brought out a large, plastic container, covered with a cloth. He looked around again, and then summoned me with his hand. He grabbed the cloth and stared at me as though he was about to show me my future or the meaning of life. Then he lifted the lid.
The truffle fumes were overpowering. I smelled black pepper and garlic with a hint of gunpowder, cashews, and ozone. The truffle guy nodded his chin for me to take a closer whiff.
“Heaven,” I muttered appreciatively.
“Tartufi bianchetti,” the truffle guy said.
I paid forty dollars for three large, marble-sized truffles and a big bag of dried porcini, and I made a new friend. We completed our deal with a toast of limoncello, and I dashed to the waiting taxi. Considering that the porcini go for fifty dollars a pound in the United States, I calculated I was holding over two hundred dollars’ worth of great mushrooms. Not to mention the truffles.
I used the truffles to create a pizza with American bison, fontina di Aosta, arugula, and a béchamel sauce. I scored in the upper echelon but did not win.
Buying truffles this time around is bound to be different. I have Bruno to translate and Tony to back me up. But as I open the heavy door, I’m hit with a major déjà vu: four old men at the same table turn to stare at me. “No freakin’ way. Not the same guys in the same chairs,” I say to no one and everyone. I stand there with my mouth open. Tony and Bruno push me into the pale green room with the jars. Nothing has changed. We get the same silent treatment, the same record player scratch, only this time I’m armed. My weapon is Bruno di Fabio.
Bruno sidles up to a waitress at the bar. “Buona sera.” I watch her face closely as he continues, because Bruno, besides being a consummate pizza aficionado and fluent in Italian, never hesitates to have fun at my expense. For all I know, he could be saying, “My two Hungarian friends over there are lepers. They want to know if the dishwasher found a finger in a soup bowl last night.”
Bruno turns. He must have noticed me boring holes into the back of his head. “What! I just asked her where the truffle guy was.”
“Those guys staring at us look harmless,” Tony says, nodding toward the old guys. “Why do they all have their hands under the table?”
“They’re probably holding old rusty shotguns under the table ready to blow us to smithereens,” I whisper. “Didn’t you ever see Godfather II?”
I’m interrupted by a loud “EEEEEEEEEEAAAAAYYYYYY” that sounds more like a shotgun blast than a greeting. Tony and I jump. It’s my truffle guy, appearing from behind the curtain. “Buona sera, my pizza friend!” The truffle man hugs me with his lanky arms. His gray unibrow now seems welcoming. I beam. Now my buddies know who’s the real pizza guy, I think. Truffle guy mutters something to the old men and they relax, but they still keep their hands under the table.
“You want tartufi? Porcini?” he asks as he walks to the front door, where he pokes his head out and scopes out the parking lot. Bruno takes over communications and explains what I want, accurately for once.
“Wait,” the truffle guy says, disappearing behind the worn tapestry.
“I wonder what these guys would do if I grabbed this jar of porcinis and ran to the door?” Bruno asks playfully. Tony and I giggle.
“Tartufi bianchetti,” the truffle guy announces. He puts a two-by-one-foot plastic box on the bar, and we all crowd around. I’m surprised to see the waitress crowding too. The grand presentation begins with a bbblllllurrrrp from the vacuum-sealed plastic container. Musky, pungent truffle fumes waft out. I imagine shucking an almost rotten ear of corn, popping a can of Planters nut mix, then sticking my nose next to diesel truck exhaust for half a second. I smack my tongue against my upper palate and breathe out slowly. I experience disgust and fascination, repelled and attracted in perfect, intense equilibrium.
With the pressure of the contest tomorrow, all I want is to get my truffles, nod in ignorance, drink my limoncello and haul ass out of there. I hold up three large truffle marbles and ask how much.
The truffle guy holds up fifteen fingers (not all at once), indicating fifteen Euro.
“Less than thirty bucks for all that?” Bruno exclaims.
“Great deal,” Tony said. As a bonus, the truffle guy gives me half a bag of dried porcini that he has handpicked.
The next day, as we enter the stadium to register at the Pizza Championship, we see our competition—the world. The world sees us, too. To enter with such a pizza legend as Tony Gemignani is like being a bodyguard for the president. Heads turn to stare at him. I am proud to be on his team.
All countries are represented: Iran, Bangladesh, Ireland, Scotland, Brazil. The French show up and try to bribe the judges with some of their kick-ass Champagne. Each contender wants the title of “Best Pizza in the World.” Now in its ninth year, the World Pizza Championship makes Iron Chef look like a yoga class at a retirement center.
The best pizza dough I’ve ever tasted is from Bruno’s biga. He’s such a fanatic that he’d probably stand at the mixing bowl all night telling bedtime stories to his biga if he knew it would make his pizza crust better. Biga is pre-fermented dough, Italian style—basically, a batch of dough left at room temperature for twenty-four hours or more and added to a new batch. This approach concentrates the flavor, adds complexity, and leads to better digestibility and taste.
Bruno’s goal at this year’s competition is to become the “World’s Fastest Pizza Maker.” Five dough balls rest in a pile of fine-grained Italian flour on his table. He has to stretch them faster than all his competitors. Bruno walks three feet to the back wall, facing it as if in greeting, then pulls up his checkered cook’s pants and squats, sumo style. His nose is just inches from the surface; his face is gnarled in knotted confidence as he beats his chest with closed, flour-covered fists. Puffs of flour shoot up the wall with every beat. Back at the table, he pushes each dough ball with both hands, stretching the gluten strands outward as fast and economically as possible. Bruno makes the time of 48.93 seconds, beating his close Italian friend Salvatore Salviani’s 52.68-second score. When he hears the news, Bruno’s primordial yell of “Yeah!” is probably audible in Bulgaria. He struts to the edge of the stage, gazes out at the crowd, and crows, “That’s gold, baaaaaaby!” as only a New Yorker can.
My other USA teammate, Justin, progresses to the finals of the acrobatic championship with a great score. He places third in the world in acrobatic dough tossing.
As for me, my biga is ready for the fire, just twelve hours old, and incorporated into my seven-ounce dough ball that rests on the marble pizza table near the oven. Three Italian contestants burned the bottoms of their pizzas just before me. This is not promising: they are all better wood-fired pizza men than I am. The optimal temperature for baking a traditional Neapolitan pizza, 905 degrees Fahrenheit, is set by the Verace Pizza Napoletana, an organization founded to protect the way true Neapolitan pizzas are made. In this traditional method, the pizza can bake for only up to ninety seconds. But the actual temperature depends on whether the oven judges stay with an existing 900-degree temperature or whether they throw another couple of oak logs on the fire. The latter is obviously the case, as bottom bricks are burning every pie. The oven temp must be well over 1,000 degrees.
The oven judge watches as I hand stretch the tipo 00 flour, a more refined and higher-gluten flour perfect for making high-temperature, wood-fired pizzas. I jab the tips of my fingers into the soft dough and create my eleven-inch disk, spreading Italian goat cheese from the Piedmont (caprino di Rimella) over it. Next, I shred fresh asiago pressa (un-aged, unlike the cheddar-like asiago d’Allevo more common in the United States) over the pizzas, followed by small squares of mozzarella di bufala. I add thinly sliced braised baby fennel, fresh thyme, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and my par-cooked Maine diver scallops cut in half horizontally. I sprinkle a fine chiffonade of roasted red peppers over all.
One of the pitfalls for many contestants is not making certain that the ashes are brushed out from the previous pizza or from fallout of the burning wood. Ashes ruin the bottom of a true Neapolitan pizza. Any good Italian oven judge can see the ashes, because they stick to the dough and turn the crust gray. Some oven judges see a chump coming to the final bake and “accidentally” forget to brush the oven bottom. Any contestant must remember that this guy docks points for just about anything, scratching away at his little scorecard at the tiniest screw-up. Too much flour on your dough? Scratch. Put sauce on the wrong way? Scratch. Forgot to pull the dough onto the pizza peel? Scratch. Neglect to clean your area? Scratch. Hail from Ohio? Scratch. I nod to the judge and grab the oven broom. He takes it from me and sweeps the oven himself.
I use the dome method to cook my pizza. I lift the pizza off the too-hot bottom bricks with the long pizza peel and hold it aloft into the domed upper roof of the pizza oven. This technique ensures an even bake and would have saved previous contestants from their burnt bottoms. Ninety seconds, and I withdraw my pie from the oven and place it on a plate, then pull out my truffle slicer and glide my tartufo bianchetto across the razor-sharp blade, depositing small, fragrant slices onto my pizza. The heat of the pizza enhances the scent. Finally, I garnish my pie with a fresh arugula and sunflower-sprout salad, and then a spritz of lemon. A great pizza, if I say so myself.
But it’s Tony who wins “Best Pizza in the USA” in the Pizza Classica category, with a whopping 713 points out of 800, for his pie of white asparagus wrapped with prosciutto, Parmigiano-Reggiano, San Marzano tomato sauce, fresh buffalo mozzarella, and fresh basil.
Still, I end up scoring higher than any other American for all categories, having successfully completed every culinary competition at the World Pizza Championship. My pan pizza with feta, chicken, sun-dried tomato, and spinach scores a respectable 607. I place first in the USA with a 550 score for my Neapolitan pizza. Even my last place in Non-Gluten garners 438 points. The 600 for my truffle and Maine diver scallop pizza puts me in First Place USA with a total of 2,195 points.
I see my American team of Bruno, Tony, and Justin only once a year, but we always bond, despite the prickly circumstances and stress that break us down to exactly who we are inside. Our shiny varnish and outward personas vanish with the jetlag, lack of space, surly hotel-kitchen chefs, hostile competitors, and the mere fact of being at the toughest pizza competition in the world. A smart guy once said, “In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.”
As our last night in Italy winds down and Bruno’s pathetic karaoke version of “Baby, We Can Talk All Night” wafts across the disco, I think about our tartufo adventure. Was there really danger or impending doom at the hands of the truffle mafia? The intrigue made the trip more exciting. Besides, I’ve saved the biggest truffle for myself. It’s stinking up my hotel room, along with a big bag of dried porcini mushrooms. After I smuggle them home, I can tell the story of the truffle guy to my family while shaving my white beauty over freshly made risotto. Then, as we taste the memory of the World Pizza Championship, I can exclaim, “That’s gold, baaaaabby!”