Pizza wars: heated words over fair price

Pizza: high-end gourmet fare or affordable food for the people? That is the question pitting Italian billionaire Flavio Briatore against chefs in Naples, where pizza making has Unesco world heritage status.

A staple for Italians and a favourite around the world, pizza is traditionally made of simple ingredients, with restaurants in Naples serving the classic pizza margherita for as little as €4 (about R67).

Briatore challenged these low prices in his answer to criticism of the prices

charged at his Crazy Pizza restaurants in London, Monte Carlo, Riyadh and Italy, where a Spanish pata negra hamtopped pizza sells for €65 and customers are charged €49 for ones covered in black truffle shavings.

“Pizza at €4? What do these people put in pizzas?” Briatore wrote on Instagram, dismissing cheap Neapolitan

margheritas as “bricks of dough with a puddle of tomato”.

Chef Sergio Miccu, president of the Neapolitan pizza maker association, hit back, accusing Briatore of betraying the pizza’s humble heritage. “Pizza has fed entire generations, overcoming ... war and cholera,” he said.