From Naples With Love — The Story Behind Italy’s Most Famous Food and Beer Pairing

Just a few minutes into the Naples episode of “No Reservations,” Anthony Bourdain sits at a table in Pizzeria Pellone, waiting for “a round of dough, covered with tomato sauce, cheese, and maybe some other stuff” to arrive. Between him and the camera stands a beer mug, which is refilled at least thrice with the restaurant’s house golden Lager.

Nothing about that is unusual—throughout the series, and in other shows starring the beloved chef and TV presenter, a glass of cold beer is a frequent sight. Bourdain enjoyed crisp, unpretentious Lagers with all kinds of food, all around the globe. During that Neapolitan episode, however, he unintentionally endorsed a pairing that has over 70 years of local precedent. Italy may be the land of wine, but pizza is almost exclusively matched with beer. 

Today, Italians take the pairing for granted, and rarely challenge it. It is a marriage ingrained in the national gastronomic culture. In fact, drinking beer with pizza represents one of the country’s principal beer-drinking opportunities, more than any other social or non-social occasion on its own. If wine is a mainstay of Italian life, the pizzeria is, after the pub, the key beer-consuming venue—though Italians uphold the pairing in domestic settings, too. 

That combination represents more than the sum of its parts. Its simplicity and humble roots epitomize Italy’s food culture, which is known for finding greatness in modest ingredients and peasant traditions. Having arisen during Italy’s post-World War II economic boom, when Neapolitan migrants spread the pizza restaurant concept across the country, the pairing also illustrates Italy’s shift from fascist dictatorship to a democratic, modern, and industrialized society. 

More recently, the pairing has gained new context within the Italian craft beer movement, by promoting the perception of artisanal beer as a valid accompaniment to high-end food. That’s true both within national borders and internationally, as Italian pizzeria brands increasingly branch out overseas. 

FROM NAPLES TO THE NORTH

After Italy became a unified country in 1861, all eateries were allowed to sell alcohol. In the 1920s, however, Benito Mussolini’s fascist government restricted the trade of alcohol products in hospitality venues. The new legislation forbade the sale of any liquor above 21%, yet offered a limited number of venues—one for every 1,000 people in any given council—the opportunity to sell beverages below 4.2% ABV. 

While the regime’s strict anti-alcohol policies, motivated by the country’s widespread issues with alcoholism, led to a significant decrease in the number of licensed premises, they also provided breweries with a category of hospitality venue that could find in beer its chief alcoholic offering. Bars, trattorias, tavernas, and, in Naples, pizzerias all fit the description. 

“We’ve always served beer. It’s just a perfect match, and in our Neapolitan site we remain loyal to it. Our decade-long relationship with our beer partner began not long after we opened in our current location [Via Cesare Sersale, in the 1930s].”

Alessandro Condurro, of historical Neapolitan pizza restaurant L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, claims that it was in that period when Peroni—the pizzeria’s brewing partner until today—became the sole alcoholic drink served at his family’s venue. “We’ve always served beer. It’s just a perfect match and in our Neapolitan site we remain loyal to it. Our decade-long relationship with our beer partner began not long after we opened in our current location [Via Cesare Sersale, in the 1930s].”

What is nowadays a global brand was then little more than a regional brewery. Founded in 1846 in Vigevano, northern Italy, Peroni’s focus soon shifted south. Its new headquarters opened in Rome in 1864. A few decades later, in 1924, Peroni launched a brewery in Bari, Puglia. In 1926, it acquired Birra Perugia in Umbria, and in 1929 it bought out Naples’ Birrerie Meridionali. The Neapolitan brewery, founded by a Swiss entrepreneur in the 19th century, was aptly located in the Capodimonte district near a set of quarries, which conveniently offered the ideal setting and temperature for beer storage.

Along with its southern expansion, Peroni undertook a promotional campaign to change Italy’s perception of beer as a lesser drink. Ennobling the category involved promoting it as a beverage suited for eating-out occasions. In 1924, the brewery released an ad featuring a busy waiter, rushing to a table while holding six foamy beer mugs. Nearly 10 years later, Peroni tasked Neapolitan bartenders and waiters with showing off their balancing skills by racing across the city while carrying a tray with a glass and a bottle of beer on top.

By the 1950s, at the onset of Italy’s economic boom, photographic evidence suggests that Peroni was widely supplied to Naples’ best-known pizzerias, including Pizzeria Mattozzi in the city’s historical center and Pizzeria Da Pasqualino by Piazza Sannazaro. Peroni had its own pizzeria, too. In 1953, significant business growth forced the brewer to up its Neapolitan game. Peroni opened a new, state-of-the-art production site in Miano, a suburb in the city’s northwest. Next to the brewery, it built a pub-pizzeria, where customers could enjoy a pint of fresh beer on draft, accompanied by Naples’ signature food.

Despite the fame it enjoyed locally, however, Naples’ beer-and-pizza pairing was still virtually unknown elsewhere in Italy during the mid-20th century. Peroni benefited from a remarkable national distribution network and from 14 bottling plants (its beer was then shipped in wooden casks), yet pizzerias were almost exclusively found in Naples. Rome counted about six and Milan even fewer. Although it is plausible that they served beer, most Italian beer was nevertheless drunk in bars. 

But in the next two decades, following the end of WWII, pizzerias slowly spread across the Italian peninsula, alongside a dramatic diaspora that saw millions of southerners move to wealthier, northern regions to escape poverty or simply to look for better wages and a more modern lifestyle. In her book, Pizza! History, Secrets and Recipes, journalist Nessia Laniado notes that Milan’s telephone directory listed just six pizzerias in 1962: “Twenty years later, the number had gone up to 393.”  

Filippo Terzaghi, president of the Italian brewers’ association Assobirra, claims that this process turned the all-Neapolitan beer-and-pizza pairing into a national staple. “In Naples, which is pizza’s birthplace, people would originally drink a lightly sparkling, crisp, red wine called Gragnano. It’s been thanks to brewers’ marketing strategy, involving branded umbrellas, trays, and glassware that beer has become pizza’s natural companion,” he said in a 2014 volume published to celebrate the work of Partesa, one of Italy’s leading beverage distributors. 

“This has opened them the doors to a totally new market while also helping pizzeria businesses grow,” he continued. “Those beer companies that understood the [business] potential of the local pizzeria have been the most farsighted. They fostered the pizza-beer association that today we just take for granted but that is instead an entirely Italian and relatively recent phenomenon.” 

It’s strange to think that pizza and beer—which feels like such an intuitive, even timeless combination—is not only a recent concept but also a revolutionary one. Not only did the growing number of pizzerias in Italy cement beer and pizza as an indissoluble duo, it propelled overall beer consumption, too. From a mere 3.3 liters per capita in 1950, Italians were drinking a yearly average of 12 liters per capita 20 years later.

A DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP

When the Italian craft beer movement kicked off in the mid-’90s, however, the pairing was seen by brewers and enthusiasts as more of a burden than an opportunity. By then, consuming beer with pizza was perceived as an old-fashioned drinking habit, associated with a food whose modesty could do little to help raise beer’s profile in the eyes of a predominantly wine-drinking nation.

“Precisely because it was so traditional, the pizza-and-beer pairing has always been taken for granted, and perhaps for that very reason considered worthless,” says Andrea Turco, founder of leading Italian beer blog Cronache di Birra. Turco points out that the pairing is often one that’s served without thought, and without taking into account the quality of or ingredients in the given pizza or beer. Any type of pizza, regardless of style or topping, was served with whatever mass-produced Lager was at hand, with little to no consideration given to the details.

“Those beer companies that understood the [business] potential of the local pizzeria have been the most farsighted. They fostered the pizza-beer association that today we just take for granted but that is instead an entirely Italian and relatively recent phenomenon.”

“That is a terrible combination, if we think about it. Not only does it ignore the diversity of the world’s brewing heritage, it also strips pizza of its rich tradition and flavor nuances,” Turco says. “In this context, craft beer has struggled significantly to find a space [at the pizzeria’s table].” As Italy’s pioneering artisan breweries were turning the country’s beer industry into one of the globe’s most exciting and vibrant, pizza seemed undeserving of similar attention. 

Yet, while craft brewers were busy promoting pairings with some of Italy’s finest foods, pizza was also entering a moment of experimentation and innovation. In 1994, Simone Padoan opened Pizzeria I Tigli, about 15 miles east of Verona. Breathing new life into the art of pizza-making, Padoan revolutionized popular perceptions of what pizza could be by challenging orthodoxy; exploring unprecedented ingredient combinations; and using a wider array of flours, kneading, and proving techniques. With Padoan, pizza had become gourmet rather than pedestrian, a playground for culinary experimentation.

Gourmet pizza went initially unnoticed within the craft beer movement. When Birrificio Artigianale Zapap’s founder Christian Govoni opened his first pizza-and-beer bar in Bologna, for instance, the pizza on offer was good, but nothing fancy. “In 2015, I found a spot in the Pratello, an area of Bologna that I have always loved. It was a takeaway pizzeria that had gone bankrupt,” he says. “I just wanted to open a bar where I could serve my own beer, and the pizza element came a bit by chance. The venue was already set up for pizza-making so I said, ‘Why not make the most of that rather than cook what everyone else does, like burgers and other pub foods?’ Craft beer and pizza is still a challenging association, but now, after five years of hard work at our Pratello venue, it is finally perceived as normal.”

Turco notes that Govoni isn’t alone, and that the situation has recently changed for the better: Pizza entrepreneurs are now developing beer programs whose quality matches their food, and breweries are finally capitalizing on a contemporary and refined approach to pizza-making as a means of elevating the beer alongside. “It all changed when the restaurant [and beer] industries, which once saw pizza as a very simple food, reconsidered their attitude towards it,” says Turco. “Italy has now developed an obsession with quality pizza, which finds evidence in the increasing occurrence of themed competitions [such as the Italian Pizza Championship, the World Pizza Championship, and the National Pizza Doc Championship]; events [including fairs and tastings]; and guides. A consequence of this is that some operators realized it is no longer possible to serve fine food paired with poor beer. Now they pay the same attention to beer and feature Italian and foreign microbreweries on their menus.”

Following a growing number of modern, gourmet pizzerias popping up across the country, Govoni’s latest site focuses on experimental doughs and local ingredients. Pizzas are paired with a range of sour beers, including Belgian classics as well as Zapap’s own creations, cellar-aged in wooden barrels just underneath the venue. “The latest site I opened is quite large,” he says. “There, we work with experimental doughs which we match with Sours with the aim to bring the world of beer and food closer. We have a laboratory where we study yeast and special fermentations and a barrel room. We only started a few months ago by filling our casks with a Farmhouse [Ale] and an Old Ale.”

TRANSCENDING NATIONAL BORDERS

In researching novel approaches to the fermentation process, focusing on quality, and using diverse and often unprecedented ingredients, modern pizza and artisan beer have dovetailed in many ways. That association, and the revival of the pizza-and-beer concept, benefits both parties, and is now migrating beyond national borders.

“The latest site I opened is quite large. There, we work with experimental doughs which we match with Sours with the aim to bring the world of beer and food closer. We have a laboratory where we study yeast and special fermentations and a barrel room. We only started a few months ago by filling our casks with a Farmhouse [Ale] and an Old Ale.”

Berberè is a pizzeria chain that has been championing quality beer since it was established in 2010. In just over 10 years, its founders, the Aloe brothers, opened 12 pizzerias in Italy before launching their first international site in London, with a further venue due to open soon in the British capital. “Berberè was born with the idea of offering people good, artisanal pizzas. For the sake of consistency, we decided to accompany them with a beverage program that follows the same principles of quality and craftsmanship,” says co-founder Matteo Aloe. “In our London pizzeria we have a selection of draft and bottled craft beers that we like very much, of a quality that fits our idea of what pizza is.”

Aloe admits that betting on craft beer wasn’t as straightforward a decision in London as it was when he launched his Italian venues: “[Many] British customers prefer to order wine, or even cocktails with pizza,” he says. Despite that challenge, he says that a slim majority of his British customers do still choose beer as their accompaniment to food. “There are differences between London and Italy … and the association of pizza with beer is not as strong abroad as it is at home. On the other hand [we found that] the British clientele is certainly more familiar with beer and beer styles than the Italian one.”

Berbère’s house beer, an Italian-style Lager called Ciao Sally, is made by Danish brewery Mikkeller. The Aloes and the Danish brewer formalized their partnership last year, when Mikkeller opened its first Italian taproom inside Berberè’s Colonne site in Milan. Aloe explains that the partnership was motivated by the need to include a range of beers with his menu—“otherwise the public prefers to divert their choice to those [mainstream] brands that they already know.” He also points out that the recent trend of enriching modern, gourmet pizzerias with a quality beer menu is helping craft beer to reach a wider audience. 

Younger, new-wave pizzerias, such as Berberè, have embraced craft beer, yet traditional Italian pizzerias are tapping into the opportunity, too. Da Michele’s Condurro has been developing a craft beer menu following nearly a century of exclusive partnership with Peroni. “I will admit, up until last year I was totally unaware of craft beer’s existence,” Condurro says. “Lately though, I have been exploring it. I did a little research and eventually created a Da Michele-branded beer in partnership with a local craft brewery, [Birra Kbirr], owned by a friend of mine who I knew was already supplying several clubs in Naples.” 

Condurro launched the project last year in full lockdown, initially testing it at the historical Neapolitan site. The experiment turned out to be a success, and he has now decided to roll it out globally, with the first overseas shipment due to reach his Japanese locations in Tokyo and Fukuoka by the end of the summer.

As Italian pizzerias expand beyond national borders, they’re helping contribute to the global perception of quality beer as a beverage fit for food. From Naples to London and Tokyo, pizzerias offer craft beer a ticket to the world’s dining tables. Though it’s often referred to as liquid bread, it might be time for beer to be known as liquid pizza.

Words by Jacopo Mazzeo
Illustrations by Colette Holston