Wait, There’s Legit Neapolitan Pizza and Other Food Trucks at a YMCA?
Zucchi Pizza is one of a handful of food trucks that’s set up at Central YMCA across from Ala Moana Center.
Photo: Thomas Obungen
Although I’ve never stayed, I recently found out it’s fun to eat at the YMCA. A pod of food trucks and trailers hawking tacos, Neapolitan pizza, açaí bowls and cannolis now call the driveway at Central YMCA home. On a recent weekend, the wood-burning brick oven at Zucchi Pizza lured me to this four-month old hub.
Photo: Thomas Obungen
Every evening except Fridays, chef-owner Rodrigo Zucchi opens the sides of his trailer at 5 p.m. to reveal a Stefano Ferrara wood-burning brick oven from Naples. It’s still hot from the evening before, so all he needs to do is add more logs to rekindle the fire. It heats up to nearly 900 degrees, which lets Zucchi cook his 12-inch pies in under two minutes.
The menu at Zucchi Pizza lists eight pies, including a sweet option with Nutella and strawberries, all ranging from $25 to $29. Dough is prepared with imported 00 flour and left to ferment and rise for 48 hours, which helps produce the signature hallmarks of a Neapolitan pizza: a puffy, leopard-spotted outer crust and a thin body. In the red sauce are San Marzano tomatoes and fior di latte cow’s milk cheese and veggies from Gava Grow farm in Mililani.
Photo: Thomas Obungen
My friend and I spring for two pies, a spicy calabrese and Italian sausage volcano ($29) and the spinach, feta and mushroom white sauce pizza ($27). Watching Zucchi prepare these from round dough balls to steaming pies in minutes is mesmerizing. As a general guide, one pie per person seems to be the safe route, while two pies will feed three people without leftovers.
We enjoy our pizzas on the tables nearby, and the pod grows busier as the night goes on. Families, couples and friends, local and visitor, set up across the grassy patches.
The spicy pizza with calabrese salumi, Italian sausage, jalapeño slices, whole Kalamata olives, fresh basil and burrata cheese packs a punch of equal heat and flavor. The provided tub of honey drizzle brings the spice under control, but a sweet wine with high acid such as a Riesling Spätlese is how I’d tame the flames and fatty sausage.
Photo: Thomas Obungen
The Alfredo sauce-based spinach, feta and mushroom pie is garlicky from end to end and the Brazilian little beak peppers—a nod to Zucchi’s home country—offer pops of sweet heat that slice through the cream’s richness. I like it with the dry chenin blanc I brought.
The chewy, gently charred crust and discernible ingredient flavors make Zucchi’s a great Neapolitan pizza.
SEE ALSO: 3 New-to-Honolulu Pizza Styles Trace Their Roots to Sfincione, the Original Sicilian Pizza
In the early 2010s, pizza joints such as V-lounge and Prima seemed to push Neapolitan pizza as the craft du jour, establishing a new ‘za scene in Honolulu. While styles have trended towards East Coast and Roman pizzerias in recent years, Brick Fire Tavern and Fatto a Mano have set the bar high on Neapolitan pizza.
Photo: Thomas Obungen
Brick Fire is the only restaurant in Hawai‘i to carry the Associazione Vera Pizza Napolitana (AVPN) seal of approval, which is the equivalent of having a designation of controlled origin, but for an entire category of food. That’s because there are strict guidelines on the techniques and products used to make the food. It takes a lot for a restaurant to earn this designation. While Zucchi Pizza does not carry an AVPN designation, I learned that Zucchi is a Brick Fire alum and strives for the same standard.
As for the other food trucks, I’ll just have to make another visit or two to really see what the spread is like. Each truck maintains different hours, so expect some to be closed when others are open.
Open daily except Fridays 5 to 9 p.m., Central YMCA, 410 Atkinson Dr., zucchipizza.com, @zucchipizza
