Vesuviano Style

Anthony Giordano, owner of Anna’s pizzeria in Providence. Photograph courtesy of Anna’s pizzeria

When people think of pizza, they often credit the staple as originating in Italy. And while Italians did perfect the margherita — that perfect blend of tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil — the favorite food has roots in ancient civilizations over thousands of years, starting with the invention of flatbread. Anthony Giordano, owner of Anna’s pizzeria in Providence, was an archaeological anthropology major in college and studied the history of ingredients and culture, including pizza, before becoming a pizza impresario himself.

“It’s a huge question, and I’ll do my best to simplify it,” he says. “I believe that pizza is a global food, and that the margherita is really the definition of fusion. I say it’s a global food, because there are so many different continents and influences that came together to create it.”

He traces the origins of flatbread back to Mesopotamia, when nomads crafted bread from domesticated durum wheat they could easily travel with over long distances. The Egyptians added yeast to the dough to create a risen flatbread. The evolution involved transporting goods from Jordan, like wheat, and tomato seeds from South America, he says, both coming into Naples, Italy, from other countries and regions of the world for trade by ships at ports.

The Neapolitans were the first to put tomatoes on flatbread in the 1700s, and they fired it in wood-burning ovens, he says. Giordano creates his own version of a margherita pie at Anna’s, which is named after his grandmother.

She came from Corbara, a little Italian village near Mount Vesuvius, where the famous San Marzano tomatoes grow that make Naples synonymous with Neapolitan pizza. “My grandparents emigrated here from Naples in 1918,” he says. “My grandmother, Anna — whose name was actually Nanianella but no one could pronounce it — was an incredibly progressive woman in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s in Brooklyn.”

She spoke three languages, including English, Italian and Yiddish, and helped other Italian immigrants find their way in New York City by translating for them. She is credited with helping the owner of Totonno’s Pizzeria in Coney Island, which still exists, obtain its license by translating for them. Giordano’s family, including five siblings, grew up going to that pizza place, and now there’s an homage to Totonno’s at Anna’s in Providence, with an article about its late owner hanging on the wall.

Giordano also lived in Naples, where he worked at a bed and breakfast and visited different Neapolitan pizzerias every week. “It was really mind-blowing to experience that, and I was so in love with it,” he says. It lit a fire under him to perfect his pizza-making craft and one day own a pizzeria of his own.

In 2021, he launched a mobile wood-fired pizza business, Anna’s Vesuviano, which has now evolved into Anna’s pizzeria, the brick-and-mortar pizza shop that opened in late July on the East Side of Providence. He puts his own spin on pies by using a sourdough starter and wheat flour that comes from Vermont and Maine, along with San Marzano tomatoes grown near Mount Vesuvius and fresh mozzarella from New York. The pizza is baked in a wood-fired oven from Naples, but his style differs from the strict rules of Neapolitan pizza, which should be fired at 800–900 degrees for ninety seconds. “We bake it about 200 degrees lower in the oven for two minutes longer. I look for a uniform crust,” he says. “I call it Vesuviano style, because it’s my own style.” 114 Doyle Ave., Providence, 400-2884, annasvesuviano.com