Mirko D’Agata, second from right in the back row, celebrates 1st prize with his team – credit @Mirkodagata via InstagramTo the sentiment of your average Italian, it would be a surprise that the winner of the world’s best Naples-style pizza came from Turin, and downright unbelievable that his pizzeria isn’t even in Italy.
Nope: to get the world’s best pizza Napolitana will cost you $8.00 for the pie, and $250 for a two-way ticket to Montreal, Canada, the adopted home of Signore Mirko D’Agata.
Winner of the 2025 Umberto Fornito Award for best pizza Napolitana at the International Pizza Challenge in Las Vegas, the transplant from Torino said he loved feeling the pressure of competing, which he had done every year since 2017, but never won top honors.
The executive chef at Pizzeria No.900 for 13 years, D’Agata was judged on the marinara, a very simple pizza that in many ways is the most challenging.
“There’s a lot of pressure: I love pressure,” he told CBC News. “You have to follow some strict rules about the dough, the fermentation, the weight of the dough, how much tomato sauce to use, how many seconds you cook.”
“When you choose to do a marinara as I always did, you have four ingredients: you have tomato sauce, oregano, olive oil, and garlic. So it’s a really simple pizza to eat but the hardest to cook, because you need the right spot, at the right time, with the right dough.”
Along with bringing true pizza Napolitana to Montreal—a great pleasure for him—D’Agata loves to coach and share his knowledge with his cooks—his pizzaioli.
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Undoubtedly the best pizza Napolitana is to be found buried somewhere in Naples, and made by the hands of some 70-year-old guy who doesn’t have the money or interest in flying to Vegas and using canned ingredients to make a pizza for snobs. But it’s nice to know that to get a world-class Naples pie, you don’t even have to leave North America.
WATCH the story below from CBC News…
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