The Pope's visit to the United States has spurred Pope-inspired items as a showcase of love for His Holiness. Apparently, the Papal seems to favour pizza! In celebration, Bleeker Street Pizza in Greenwich Village served up a pizza with ingredients assembled to create His Holiness' image.
As reported in Time, Pope Francis wanted to taste a slice of the famous New York City pizza as Father Hernan Peredes said last week to Fox 5 New York. In that spirit, chef Tony Slihaj has made a pizza with the His Holiness portrait using the toppings to create the pontiff's image.
On the mozzarella and tomato pie, the pope's image is seen wearing a white robe made out of ricotta cheese. The pizzeria made use of anchovies to make the illustration of Jesus Christ on the cross. It was also creatively used to form shadows on his robe and on his face. A touch of yellow on his hat was made of mashed pineapples. While red peppers and cucumbers were used to imitate the red and green parts of his garments. For the Holiness' skin, ricotta cheese and raspberries were mixed to create a natural skin tone. According to Tony Salihaj, his Holiness skin tone was the hardest part of the portrait to create.
More so, Salihaj said that they were offered produce 30 more of this Papal's pizza but declined stating that they do not have time to create more of this. For one pizza along, Salihaj and his team spent five hours to make the limited edition pie. He also declined offers of $1,000 to create more saying that , "We're not artists. We're just pizza people." The pie is currently on display in the shop.
This is not the only dish that was inspired by Pope Francis. According to New York Post, another pizzeria, Tibalta pizzeria, has created its own version of the Pope's Pizza: A pie topped with yellow tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella in the colors of the Vatican. Greenpoint pizzeria has Papa Frankie which is composed of a white pie cooked in wood-fire oven, and topped with a cross of yellow and red cherry tomatoes to represent the Vatican colors. Keste Pizza & Vino has created a different pie on the other hand. Co-owner Roberto Caporuscio researched his Holiness favourite food and found out that calamari was one of them. So he made a Pizza del Papa Francesco which is topped with calamari stuffed with ground beef, yellow zucchini sautéed with speck, grape tomatoes and Urbani truffle cream.
However, all these creations did not come close to what Bleeker Street Pizza created. It seems to be the perfect pie for Pope Francis' followers. What do you think? Would you like to try one of these pizzas?
