OTT: “Leave the gun; take the cannoli.”

DUCA’S NEAPOLITAN PIZZA
Rating: 4.5/5
236 E Cheyenne Mountain Blvd.
www.DucasPizza.com
(719) 247-8830
Hours: Mon-Thur: 11am-8pm; Fri: 11am-9pm; Sat: Noon-9pm Sun: Closed
Prices: (12” pizzas) $5.75-$11.25
What you need to know: If the Italian government says it’s the real deal, who can argue with that?

You may love your Chicago deep dish. You may feel nostalgic for a New York slice. But Duca’s offers a pizza entirely different.

With the endorsement of authenticity by the American delegation of the “Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana”—the Italian government association that registers approved suppliers of “Pizza Napoletana”—one may consider a visit to Duca’s an education in Neapolitan cuisine. If you wish to experience the original pizza, circa 1600, that was later commemorated by Queen Margherita in 1889 for its trio of colors representative of the national flag, there exists only one local pizzeria to visit.

What will immediately strike you about Duca's is the tile: walls clad in white subway tiles, and a floor overlaid in a mosaic of white hexagons. The interior is a meeting of European bistro and Chipotle line ordering—clean, inviting and efficient. Standing boldly in the back corner are two domed wood-fired ovens, gleaming in black tiles with their respective names patterned into the front of each. “Duke” and “Napoli” crank out over 800F degrees of pizza blistering heat. Cooking a pie takes a mere 90 seconds in one of these hand-built ovens.

The authenticity of its dough is a point of pride for Duca’s. With ingredients of only flour, water, salt and wild yeast, it is the natural fermentation in the preparation process that creates the incredible flavor present in crust, a soft and chewy crust that you would never consider casting aside.

The Pizza Margherita ($6.95) boasted Duca’s hand crushed tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil. While the basil was a bit sparse, the pizza’s overall aesthetic was unparalleled. The quality of the tomatoes is evident in the multidimensionality of the sauce—how mere crushed tomatoes can taste so good is, perhaps, a trade secret.

Gorgonzola, caramelized onions, fresh mozzarella and rosemary graced the top of one of Duca’s specialty pizzas ($9.45). The absence of any sauce was far from conspicuous as the otherwise pungent flavors balanced beautifully.

Thankfully, Duca’s is not a one-hit-wonder. In the unlikely event you tire of pizza, folded flatbread sandwiches called piadines challenge the pies for pride of place. Where the Neapolitan pizzas are authentically svelte, to the extent of being almost diminutive, the piadines are substantive. (Neapolitans enjoy their pizza with fork and knife, possibly because a slice could almost flap in the breeze of a light wind.) The meatball piadine ($8.50) pleased in flavor and texture. The flatbread is created from the same fermented dough; the meat was somewhat dense but well seasoned. For a dollar we recommend a side of additional tomato sauce.

An education in Italian cuisine is incomplete without the final embellishment of one small fingerling of cannoli ($1.25). An exemplary, made-in-New-York, ricotta delicacy. Order two or three because, as Clemenza rightly instructed: “Leave the gun; take the cannoli.”

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