A Glimpse of Italy Written and Designed by Alex appel
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all of my friends and all of my family, most of whom share my passion of eating authentic Italian pizza. I hope that after reading this book, we can all go to Terun on a regular basis.
Acknowledgements This book could not have been possible without Maico Compilongo, the owner of Terun Restaurant, and his immense generosity throughout the entire duration of our documentary assignment.
I would like to thank Paul Pierantozzi for partnering with me on this project, and helping me throughout every stage of it. A great thanks to Ms Parkinson for pressuring me to finish my assignments on time and giving me very helpful design ideas and advice.
Thank you to all my friends who went out of their way to help us when we needed it.
o C n f o t ent e l b s Ta Foreword................................................................................................................................................... 7 Introduction..............................................................................................................................................9 Chapter One.............................................................................................................................................10 Chapter Two............................................................................................................................................ 14 Chapter Three........................................................................................................................................ 20 Conclusion........................................................................................................
Foreword
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became interested in this topic as soon as I heard about the concept of the restaurant from my good friend Paul. I had originally chosen a different location to document, but before long I was hooked on TerĂşn and decided to switch my topic. TerĂşn grabbed my attention because of its incredible qualities which stand out of the stereotypical restaurant culture in this area. My greatest challenge with this book was the research, because it is hard to find relevant information for such a vague topic. I worked through these difficulties by conducting thorough interviews that answered the specific questions I had about the location without getting vague results in my search for answers on the internet. I have certainly grown as a writer and even more so as a designer with this project. Each page of this book took a great amount of patience, learning, failure, and persistence to accomplish. And every deadline pressured me to work faster, and even if I may have missed a few of the deadlines, I am still pleased and very relieved about how this book turned out. My goal with this book is to show my readers a culture of restaurants in other parts of our world, to let go of the clichĂŠ form of American food consumption, and enter the world of traditional Italian dining.
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Introduction
t was my first time in Italy. I was just a 15 year old pianist within the myriad of professional and semi-professional musicians from all around the world. It was during last summer at my first ever International Academy of Music festival when I first tried the true Italian Pizza. Not only was I shocked by the size of the pizza, the speed at which it was prepared, but also at its almost addictingly mouthwatering flavour, that no other pizza I have ever tried the United States could ever surpass. I went to that restaurant almost every day for the rest of my days at the festival, and tried a number of different pizza’s. When I came back home, I stopped eating pizza’s altogether. I may have eaten one or two in the few months following my arrival in the US, but in general, I felt as though American pizza was no longer worth my time. Italian was the only way to go. Fortunately, my halted pizza-eating lifestyle was resumed when I heard about Terún from my friend and partner for this project, Paul Pierantozzi. After I agreed to partner with him for the project, he took me to the restaurant for my first time, and I felt like was back in Italy. From the very beginning of its existence, the pizza at Terún restaurant was 100% pure Italian with every bit of its ingredients imported from the original country. In this book we will discuss the business of the restaurant, such as costs of importing ingredients, as well as how such a young restaurant was able to become so successful, and lastly, how the culture of traditional Italian pizza is different from what the Americanized form is like. We won’t get into too much detail just yet, but you will soon learn about an oasis of true pizza in our very own backyard.
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Chapter One: The History of pizza
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eing invented roughly 300 years ago in Naples, Italian pizza was originally “consumed by Naples’ poor featured the tasty garnishes beloved today, such as tomatoes, cheese, oil, anchovies and garlic” (Turim). Although there were foods that resembled pizzas before the traditional Italian pizza came around, what really changed the pizza into what we think of it today are the tomatoes (Demetri). Pizza was first invented in Naples, Italy for the demands of poor
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peasants who needed something cheap yet fulfilling to consume. Being “flatbreads with various toppings, eaten for any meal and sold by street vendors or informal restaurants” (Turim), pizza was a good form of food for the poor people of Naples, largely due to the way pizza was prepared. “The way the levitation happens, gives you the feeling like you are full, you have a lot of food, but its not too much. It used to be in the past food for poor people. So it makes you full, makes you like not starving
anymore..”(Compilongo). The way the pizza is prepared, provides the consumer with a fairly healthy balanced meal that even in relatively small portions, can be enough to fill up.
Chapter Two: What Makes Italian Pizza Different
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hat is the difference between Italian pizza and American pizza? Why is one pizza considered cheap fast food for birthday parties and the other a fine dining item at a fancy restaurant. The answer lies in the processes of preparation. Traditional Italian pizza is cooked in a specially designed oven that heats up to incredible temperatures. In Terún, “ [the] pizza cooks in a wood oven. The temperature inside the oven is 800-900 degrees. The pizza cooks very fast. And that gives the chance for the product to cook, but leave the same flavour”(Compilongo). By the late 19th century, when immigrants from Italy began moving to the United States, Italian pizzas very quickly caught the attention of the American population, and in 1905, the 16
first ever documented pizzeria in the United States opened (Turim). Americans started loving the pizza a lot and soon it became a common food item across the nation.
Italian pizzas are different from the fastfood style American pizza we see today. The pizza’s have much thicker crusts, considerably worse ingredients, and cook in modern ovens that don’t heat up to such high temperatures that
provide enough heat to really save the flavour. Something that slightly sets Terún apart from the Italian pizza crowd is that “[they] try to not use a lot of butter, and cream, when most Italian restaurants do” (Dangelo). This means that Terún pizza is even healthier than most Italian pizzerias, let alone American fast food chains. Despite its surroundings of fast food pizza culture, Terún is very proud to present authentic Napoletana pizza from Naples that wows anybody who tries it in contrast to the fast food pizza they normally eat.
“The most important thing I imported is the tomato, the flour, the prosciutto, the salami, so I can make some pizza from those things. But I try to not use a lot of butter, and cream, when most Italian restaurants do.� - Kristyan Dangelo
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Chapter Three: What makes TerĂşn Different
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pon coming back from my first visit to Terún restaurant, I had one main thought in mind. The answer to our last question “When did you start the restaurant?”. Logistically, the question would have better fit somewhere closer to the beginning, of course, but we hadn’t been prepared to ask that question. I only felt the need to ask out of pure curiosity. The answer shocked me: “One year. One year ago”, restaurant owner Maico Compilongo replied. Looking back at my ex-
perience at the restaurant I remembered the way I was feeling. The owner seemed very open and welcoming and shook my hand. It’s almost unheard of for American restaurants to have such services. Let alone American pizza chains, where the owner of the chain could be thousands of miles away from his patrons. I am not the only one to have this opinion. Terún has excellent
reviews with compliments from received over the course of its existence. Furthermore, the restaurant is always filled up with customers, most of which come to the restaurant on a very common basis. This data suggests that the restaurant became extremely successful in a mere year. According to a study from University of Santa Barbara, 30 percent of restaurants fail within the first year of their existence. So what makes Terún so different?
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“It’s important because in this way we can replicate exactly what happens in Italy - the mozzarella, burrata cheese, everything. Like everything, if you make at home a nice plate of pasta if you use the right olive oil, it makes the difference.” - Maico Compilongo
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ell, for one thing, the restaurant is located in an area of moderately heavy traffic. This provides a diverse array of customers to the restaurant continuously throughout the day. Perhaps an even better explanation to the restaurant’s success though, is what awaits the consumers as soon as they enter the restaurant. The culture behind restaurants and interaction with patrons in Italy is dramatically different from the conventions here
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in the United States. In traditional Italian restaurants, the owner knows everyone personally, and talks with his customers sometimes for reasons completely unrelated to the purpose of their visit to the restaurant which would generally be to eat. As Maico points out, food is only half of what a good restaurant should be. “Restaurants are made by people and by food. I think we got a good combination” (Compilongo). Terún takes this Italian culture and
perfectly transfers it into an American setting. Maico Compilongo, one of the three owners of Terún, knows a lot of his visitors personally, and his personality really shines through and affects his business in a positive way. Because of this, Terún restaurant was awarded the status of number one pizza restaurant in Palo Alto, and is being rewarded every day with love from its customers.
Conclusion
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ot only is Italian pizza is what TerĂşn knows how to do well; they also understand how to provide customers with the perfect, authentic Italian atmosphere within their restaurant. My visit to this restaurant has inspired me to share my experience, causing me to invite more and more people to this wonderful establishment in our very backyard - Palo Alto. Once I became an Italian pizza fanatic, I have had trouble going back to eating our fast food American pizza that many of us grew up on. My experience in Italy helped me begin appreciating the art of pizza, and my ties to this restaurant have made this very convenient and easy. The food, as well as the atmosphere, created by TerĂşn truly provides customers with a glimpse of Italy.
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Works Cited
Compilongo, Maico. Personal interview. 8 Feb. 2014. Dangelo, Kristyan. Personal interview. 12 Mar. 2014. Demetri, Justin. “History of Pizza.” Italy. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. Handly, Mark. “Wood-burning Pizza Oven Manufacturers.” Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. “Italy.” Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World. Ed. Susan Bevan Gall and Kathleen J. Edgar. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: U*X*L, 2012. 139-148. Student Resources in Context. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. King, Tiffany, David Njite, John T. Self, and H. G. Parsa. “Why Restaurants Fail.” N.p., 2005. Web. Reiley, Laura. “A SLICE OF ITALY COMES TO YBOR; There’s a lot to love about Cristino’s No. 2: the pizza, for sure, but also classic Italian dishes and a generous array of gelato.” Tampa Bay Times [St. Petersburg, FL] 15 Jan. 2014: 3E. Student Resources in Context. Web. 2 Apr. 2014. Turim, Gayle. “A Slice of History: Pizza Through the Ages.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, 27 July 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
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A Glimpse of Italy Alex Appel
Alex Appel is a junior at Los Altos High School and Freestyle Academy. In his free time he likes to do things unrelated to school, like sports and music. He is a competitive sailor and has received awards at numerous regattas. Alex has a passion for playing piano, guitar, clarinet, and a bit of saxophone as a hobby. He loves to socialize and hang out with his friends and family. Alex still does not know for sure what he wants to do as a profession, but he hopes his choice will bring him happiness in life.
A Glimpse of Italy Written and Designed by Alex appel