Lievito Pizzeria

Lievito Pizzeria sits on Carrer dels Ocells in Son Cotoner, a residential quarter in Palma's Ponent district, and that address is part of the character: not a tourist strip but a street you have to set out for. The place is small and prettily kept, the kitchen open — from the dining room you look straight at the wood-fired oven, which was brought over from Italy specially. The mood that comes of it is intimate and homely. At the oven stands Andrea Pastina, pizzaiolo and owner. He comes from Battipaglia in Campania and started young there, as assistant to a pizza maker at a long-established pizzeria in his home town. The trade then took him to England, Australia and New Zealand before he opened his own place in Palma. He works visibly in the room rather than behind a wall: eat here and you watch the pizza being made. The promise of the house is put briefly — authentic Neapolitan pizza with fresh ingredients from Italy, the taste of Naples in the middle of Palma. It is redeemed first of all through the dough. It is made by hand and carried for twenty-four hours before it goes into the oven: a long fermentation, the thing that in this school decides everything that follows — the rim, the structure, what the oven can make of it. Dough, San Marzano and the Lievito Pizzeria menu Two ingredients the house names explicitly: San Marzano tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella. Both are markers of the Neapolitan school, and both appear on the menu where they belong — the Regina, for instance, is the pizza topped with buffalo mozzarella. The menu is sorted into red and white pizzas. The red ones include Margherita, Marinara, Diavola, Parmigiana, Capricciosa, Napoletana, that Regina, a Vegana, a Tacos Estate and the Calzone. The white ones do without tomato: Ortolana, Bianca al Cotto, Provola e Pancetta, Tonno e Cipolla, Patate e Salsiccia and Quattro Formaggi. The canon is covered in full, and there is still room beside it for combinations you will not find everywhere. La Pizza Según Andrea and the seven deadly sins The specials run under the heading “La Pizza Según Andrea”, pizza according to Andrea. Their names are borrowed from the seven deadly sins: Gola, Accidia, Invidia, Avarizia, Lussuria and Ira. The idea does not stop at the naming; the toppings really do lean towards excess. The Lussuria carries truffle cream, taleggio, mushrooms, lardo di Colonnata and honey. The Ira works with gorgonzola, spicy sobrasada and caramelised red onion. This is exactly where the menu turns Mallorcan. Sobrasada is not a Neapolitan ingredient but the island's spreadable sausage — and it turns up several times: on the Ira, on the Invidia and, among the starters, on the Bruschetta Mallorquina together with goat's cheese and caramelised onion. That is the point at which a correct Neapolitan menu becomes one that could only have come about on this island. From the Montanara to the Boca-Pizza Before the pizza comes a row of Italian starters and small plates. The most interesting is the Montanara: a fried disc of dough with a tomato sauce cooked for four hours, and parmesan. Beside it stand Focaccia, Bruschetta con Tomate, Patatas Lievito, Polpette, Tagliata di Bresaola, Pomodorini e Burrata, a Parmigiana 2.0 and Fiori di Zucca. A category of its own is the Boca-Pizza: folded pizza bread, baked and then filled cold with fresh ingredients. The variants are called Polpette, Parmigiana, Salsiccia e Provola, Estate, Superbia and Mortadella e Burrata. At the end the menu stays partly with the oven: alongside panna cotta, tiramisu and cannolo there are a Pizza Nutella and a Pizza Pistacchio. Son Cotoner and the way to Lievito Son Cotoner lies in the Ponent district, west of the centre of Palma. It is a residential quarter rather than a going-out one — the streets are quieter, and the places to eat belong more to the neighbourhood than to the programme of a city break. Andrea himself describes the location of his pizzeria plainly as “zona Son Cotoner”, and that is how an evening here feels. Because the room is small, a reservation is advisable. It runs by phone or through the house's own booking system; on Instagram the pizzeria is at @lievito_palma. If you are coming for the first time, sit where you can see the oven — that is the most interesting seat in the room.