The Unexpected Pizza Combination You Can Find At Netflix's Famous Pizzeria Bianco
Thank you, Netflix, for letting us travel around the world to eat delicious dishes. Recently, food fans have been enjoying armchair travel through original Netflix shows like "Chef's Table," which first aired in 2015 and follows the life stories of visionary chefs around the world as they display their craft through restaurants and other food ventures. Now, the show is returning with a series dedicated especially to pizza, a worldwide food icon with Italian origins.
On the first episode of "Chef's Table: Pizza," you'll meet Pizzeria Bianco, located in the heart of downtown Phoenix. This is an artisanal pizzeria with attentive detail to the quality of its ingredients. The owner, Chris Bianco, follows local flour and goat cheese production carefully and has a close relationship with farmers. His pizza spot has been acknowledged as America's best, per USA Today, and, since 1996, has been praised for its superior pizza, friendly staff, cozy setting, and wood-burning oven where all the magic happens.
What does Bianco have that other pizzerias don't? Eater says the menu goes far beyond the classic Margherita pie. To eat at Pizzeria Bianco is to enjoy the pizza experience in a whole new way — with pistachios on top, and no tomato sauce, for example. Excuse me, WHAT?
The Pizza Rosa has red onion, rosemary, Parmigiano, and chopped pistachios
Bianco told Eater that the idea for his popular Rosa pizza started on one of his trips to the northwest Italian region of Liguria. There, he had a simple crusty focaccia with sesame seeds on top, and its flavor was surprisingly delicious. He was inspired to create something just as nutty and crunchy, yet surprisingly minimalist. His pizza version of the dish maintains that simplicity in a wheat flour-based dough, topped with parmesan cheese, red onion, rosemary, and salted pistachios. This white pie skips the tomato sauce, which would overwhelm the other flavors.
Arizona Journey describes Bianco's pizza as perfectly balanced, with the crust at the perfect meeting point between chewy and crispy. On top of the signature crust, the Rosa pie packs in the perfect amount of fat, balanced by the acidic onions and complete with the distinctive umami of Parmigiano. As Chris Bianco himself describes it, "This is a pizza of restraint that delivers tenfold on its first bite" (via Goldbelly). If you want to try it for yourself, reviews on Tripadvisor warn that the no-reservations restaurant often has a 2- to 3-hour wait — but there's a bar next door to tide yourself over with drinks and appetizers.