The Deal With Nomad’s Roman Pies
Yesterday I referred to Nomad’s new Roman pizzeria as having Roman Al Taglio-style slices of pizza. I was wrong. Al Taglia pizza is common in Rome and almost exclusively served from street vendors. What Nomad’s Tom Grim has in mind is very thin round pies with toppings going right to the edge. I’ll let him explain it from here.
After spending a week in Rome several years ago, we ate a lot of pizza. We had many pizzas at Da Buffeto, Remo, and Pizzeria Ai Marm (the Morgue so named because of their many long marble tables)
These places serve very thin, round pizzas. We watched in awe of the pizza makers. They hand roll (with a dowel) 24 pizzas at the same time. They top them all in a matter of minutes and put them all in the oven at the same time.
Two minutes later, they take them all out. They have a huge oven, much larger than ours. They made many hundreds of pizzas every night. The pizzas are served unsliced and customers use a knife and fork. No pizza cutters in sight.
When I returned that winter I spent many many weeks trying to make a delicious Roman pizza. Once I got it down, I started quietly offering Romans to regular customers.
Roman pizzas have been on our ‘secret’ menu ever since. We have many customers that are loyal fans of Roman pizza. We have several native Italian customers that tell us our Roman is better than what they’ve had in Rome.
I do believe we use better ingredients. We use fresh motz and they use processed. We use organic EVOO and they often use cheaper oils. We let our dough age for 3 days.
They use dough the same day. The cost difference could explain why ours could be better. In Rome these pizzas are half the price (but a couple inches smaller).
Every morning at 8 am I make a small batch of Roman dough that we will use 3 days later. The formula and process is slightly different than Neapolitan dough.
We think this round, thin Roman pizza should be an option in Philadelphia.
Sounds good to us. We look forward to trying it at Nomad Roman.
