Fug... This!

In which I sample several versions of one of Argentina's most iconic pizza spin-offs.

“Fugazza” is a corruption of “focaccia”, that sounds like the way Tony Soprano might say it (except in New Jersey Italian, fugazi means something fake or false), and consists of pizza or focaccia dough, topped with the charred onions. “Fugazza con queso” is the same, but with cheese over the onions. “Fugazzeta” is the reverse, with the onions atop the cheese so that, supposedly, they brown - though many places add them to the top of the pie too late in the game and they don’t. It does get a bit murky, and not everyone is a stickler for these definitions. Also, none of these are Argentine inventions. Focaccia con cipole or focaccia alla cipola, with or without cheese, is a specialty of Liguria, particularly in and around Genoa.

But then there’s a “fugazzeta rellena” which has a double crust with a layer of cheese - traditionally either mozzarella or cuartirolo, between, and then more cheese and onions on top, and often other additions like ham or bacon (in or atop), and sometimes, bechamel sauce. This one is a quintessential Argentine take on pizza, first created by Juan Banchero, a Genovese immigrant, some time between 1893 and 1932, during his tenure at a local pizzeria, and then it became the flagship item when he opened his own, eponymous pizzeria, Banchero, in La Boca in 1932. While it seems likely that someone back in his hometown of Genoa may have prepared double crust pizzas at some point in the century before him, he’s the first to make the claim to fame and have a written record for it. And maybe he was the first to attempt it.

I rarely order just fugazza - I want my cheese, not just onions and dough, and I tend to prefer fugazzeta to fugazza con queso because with the latter, the onions are still often borderline raw under the cheese. The rellena, stuffed, version, has often felt a bit over the top, but it’s such an icon of Argentine pizza offerings that it has to be tried. While I could go back and pull out past samplings, I thought I’d start afresh, albeit I will likely go back revisit some of my preferred spots from the past.

I met up with a friend in Florida… not the southern US state, but the barrio north of Buenos Aires. The plan was to hit a particular pizzeria that had garnered some rave reviews. What we didn’t know was that they’re takeout only, and there was nowhere, not even a nearby park or plaza, to sit and eat. So we went to the only other pizzeria open nearby, Restaurante Muky, Av. Maipú 1499. Now, I had this vague feeling we’d been there before, though my companion asserted we had not. I was, it turns out, right, in going back and looking at old reviews - we’d tried the place back in October 2018. At the time, we’d tried a half and half pizza of fugazzeta and bacon-arugula. We hadn’t been impressed. But, not having solidly remembered this outing at the time, we decided we were here to order the fugazzeta rellena.

And, I’m glad we did, because the experience, and the pie, were so different from what I’d written about a half dozen years ago. This is a fugazzeta rellena worth making the hour long trip to the northern ‘burbs for. Perfectly golden crust, no “soggy bottom”, a whopping amount of bubbling, melty mozzarella in the center, and a topping of lovely, bronzed red and white onions, slivers of ham, both mozzarella and parmesan, and a dusting of herbs - likely oregano and parsley - and, a pitted olive (leaving the pits in is so last century). At 31000 pesos it seems a trifle steep, but this is such a massive offering, we each barely made it through two slices, and my friend took two home for another meal.

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Sometimes I just want to stay in and watch a little television. On my list of fugazzeta rellenas to try was the one from famed local pizzeria Angelín, Cordoba 5270, in Villa Crespo, which I went to once, a good seventeen years ago. Now, Angelín is mostly famous for two things, first, another claimed Argentine pizza invention, the pizza canchera, a cheese-less pizza topped with highly seasoned tomato sauce, and served room temperature. They supposedly invented it back in the ‘50s to be served at futból matches. The issue, as with so many of these proud claims here, is that pizza rossa, or pizza marinara, was actually the original pizza created in Naples back in 1735, shortly followed by the more popular pizza margarita. It was, and is, a common street snack in and around that area, to date. I’m not sure that serving it cold rather than hot is all that much of an invention. Still, perhaps another future search is in order, for the best of.

But, I was on to this post’s topic, and their well touted fugazzetta rellena con jamón. You can already see from the photo that this just isn’t the browned beauty of the previous entry. It’s cooked through, but just not crisped up. The layer of cheese between the crusts is meager, and while the topping of lunchmeat ham, more mozzarella, and onions is reasonably generous, everything’s uneven - there are thin slivers of onion aside chunks of the same - like someone just got bored with slicing onions and started to just cut wedges here and there. There’s little to no seasoning. It was, unfortunately, all just a bit of a yawn. And the same size pizza as the above one comes in at 32240 pesos, a tad more, but far less enjoyable.

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During my wander through the Caminito a week or so ago, I had to stop for sustenance at some point. I’d had La Gran Pocha, Olivarría 707, La Boca, on my list for awhile, though I can’t say that I have a clue as to why. It certainly doesn’t show up on lists of best pizzerias, nor does it, as best I know, have anything unique about it, other than, perhaps, it’s the closest pizzeria to La Bombonera, the stadium for the Boca Juniors futból team.

I had some choices here - on the top, left to right, napolitana (just the edge of it showing), canchera (the cheese-less pizza I mentioned above), fainá (chickpea bread, often eaten along with pizza here in Argentina), and a classic fugazzeta rellena. On the lower level is a fugazzeta rellena con jamón - with ham, oddly, for Argentina, cut in squares rather than a round pie in triangles.

I went classic. It’s… different. The crust is very soft and spongy, barely browned on the bottom, and it’s almost the texture of white sandwich bread. It’s also slightly sweet. Interestingly, we were just a couple of weeks ago watching an episode of the new season of Top Chef USA, and a competitor from Ecuador made what she claimed was fugazzeta dough she’d learned in Argentina, that was almost exactly like this - white flour, milk, sugar, and yeast. My reaction at the time was that I’d never encountered that sort of dough on a fugazzeta or pizza. I guess now I have. There’s a good amount of cheese here, but the slice was barely warmed, so it wasn’t all oozy and bubbly, it was just kind of a softened block. And the meager scattering of onions over the top didn’t do a lot for it. On the other hand, the cheapest fugazzeta I’ve ever had, coming in at 1500 pesos, barely over a dollar, which might explain its popularity at the side of the stadium.

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Pizzería Serafín, Av. del Libertador 932, just over the line into Retiro from Recoleta, is one of my go-to neighborhood spots for pizza. It’s not top of the heap, but it’s good, inexpensive, and their fugazzeta rellena is one of my personal favorites.

Do I even have to wax-on about this one? Look at that. And it’s just as delicious as it looks. Beautifully browned, flavorful crust, oozing, delicious, gooey cheese, a decent layer of well caramelized onions, and a dusting of “Italian herbs” - probably a commercial mix of oregano, thyme, and parsley, or something similar - those packaged dried herbs like that never have a solidly defined character. It comes in at 3500 pesos, a whole pie, 29,300. This one isn’t to be missed.

Four seems like a good point to stop for now. I’ll definitely get to more, and maybe change it up with the opposite end of the spectrum, with some pizzas cancheras.

As it stands, just from these, Serafín is my pick - for convenience, price, and… just go back and look at that picture. Muky, a very close second, but just too far away - though if you find yourself up that direction, worth stopping in. The other two I wouldn’t go back to for their fugazzeta rellena, though I did like Angelín’s canchera, way back. Maybe I’ll give La Gran Pocha a shot on theirs next time I’m in La Boca, which isn’t often.