In 1996, La Pizza Fresca Ristorante rocked our pizza world by opening on 20th Street north of Union Square. It was an elegant spot with fancy wine and a wood-burning oven: unusual then, but commonplace now. It focused on pizza, but not the New York kind descended from places like Lombardi’s and Totonno’s.

Instead, it claimed to serve the true pizza of Naples, and the next year was certified by an Italian trade organization, Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana, as being authentic through the use of certain kinds of imported flour and tomatoes and other arcane aspects of pizza-making.