I’ve been reading a lot of Craig Mod’s writing lately, and his article in Eater “Tokyo Neapolitan: The New Wave of Japanese Pizza” makes me really want to fly there. Right now. I feel like that most days, but … the art they bring to crafting things is just.. needed right now.
But Kakinuma is adamant that his pizzas aren’t, in fact, Neapolitan. “Absolutely not,” he said. “They’re Kakinuma-style pizzas. Look, Japanese people are really free. What I mean by that is, Japanese pray on New Year’s Day at a Shinto shrine, get married in a Christian church, and hold their funerals at a Buddhist temple. They’re beholden to no single point of view.” Kakinuma feels a freedom to push and pull within the general cosmos of Neapolitan-style, disregarding Italian tradition at will. “What’s wonderful about pizza is that it really is a bit like sushi,” he said. “You don’t touch the base ingredients. Your goal is to pull the richest inherent flavor from the ingredients at hand.”
I miss Japan, and I’ve only been there once. I can’t wait to go again.