I was walking around after eating a pretty great pizza at Pizzeria Brandi, when I saw a huge crowd lining up for what appeared to be some kind of food. A bit of investigation revealed it to a place called Zia Esterina that’s actually really famous for their fried pizza.
If you’ve read my post about Las Fritas in Barcelona, then you’ll know I’m pretty much entirely powerless to resist a line for food. What’s at the end of that line? How delicious is it? I must know.
But… I just ate an entire pizza. I’m not hungry. I’m actually the opposite of hungry. What’s that again? Oh yeah: full. As in the state of being where you don’t eat a fried pizza like a moron.
I’ve said before that I’m not very smart. I’d like to reiterate that, if it’s even necessary at this point.
They have a few different combinations of fillings, but I went with the base model, which is tomato sauce, mozzarella and ricotta.
And I mean, it was good. How could it not be? Pizza is delicious. Fried things are delicious. That’s like a collision course of tastiness right there.
But it wasn’t great. Maybe it’s just the extreme fullness talking, but it lacked that perfect balance of textures and flavours that makes regular, non-fried Neapolitan pizza so remarkable. It was a bit sloppy, and though it had that crispy fried exterior, most of it was soggy from all the sauce and cheese. I basically enjoyed it, but it tasted enough like a regular pizza to make me wish I was eating that instead.
But I mean, I was ridiculously full, so maybe take my opinion with a grain of salt? It’s certainly popular enough.
Also: I absolutely do not recommend eating one of these after eating a whole pizza. I didn’t even manage to finish it — I got about two-thirds of the way through and then quickly chucked the rest before I’d have a chance to change my mind — and I was still profoundly, uncomfortably full (you can file that one under yeah, no shit, Sherlock).