The best pizza in Salzburg: my 7 recommendations

Pizza in Salzburg city

In the city I choose between five addresses depending on the situation. Casa Napoli on Bergstraße is my first choice when it has to be classic Neapolitan: airy base, buffalo mozzarella, little on top. At Ciro on Robinigstraße the pizza comes out of a wood-fired oven, and the place has been in family hands for decades – the daughter now works in the kitchen too.

Cosmic on Saint-Julien-Straße cooks the same Neapolitan style, only with a livelier evening crowd; its Bufala comes with San Marzano DOP tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and pecorino. If you need something quick at midday near the Mirabell gardens, go to taste.it on Auerspergstraße: it serves a changing Italian business lunch, but no pizza is documented. And for the vegan case, Vegitalian in Mülln is the address on the profile – Italian cooking, entirely plant-based, listed with “vegan pizza”.

How to recognise the Neapolitan school: the rim is high and airy, the centre stays soft and the topping is sparse. Roman pizza is the opposite – thin across the whole surface, evenly crisp, with more topping. In Salzburg you will find almost exclusively the Neapolitan version; a wood-fired oven and Neapolitan pizza are not the same thing, though. A wood oven is documented in the profiles of Ciro and MAMMA MIA – for the other addresses nothing is stated.

Pizza in the Salzburger Land

Two addresses deliberately sit outside the city, and both are worth the drive. You go to MAMMA MIA in Lamprechtshausen for the real wood-fired oven and for a garden where you can sit with children; the menu goes beyond pizza and lists ćevapčići and Dalmatian-style fish.

In Eugendorf sits Basilikum with Neapolitan pizza and a terrace. If you are travelling by car this is the easiest option: parking is noted on the profile and takeaway is possible. For both, the same applies as in town – call ahead at the weekend.

What makes a good pizza

In the end the base decides. Good dough is elastic, shows bubbles and tastes lightly of grain – floury or dry tastes of nothing. When you lift a slice the tip should stay up rather than droop; the centre may be juicy, but soggy is a fault. On the rim, where there is no topping, you can see whether the oven was hot enough: it puffs up there and takes dark spots instead of staying evenly pale.

With the topping, restraint wins. Good tomato sauce tastes of tomato, not sugar; mozzarella goes on in pieces rather than grated; oil comes on after baking. A pizza carries two or three ingredients well – with five the structure is lost. And it belongs on the table immediately: it does not improve on the way.

Four things you can check at the table: is the rim airy or leathery? Does the base stay firm in the middle? Does the sauce taste of tomato? And can you hold the slice without the topping sliding off? If yes, the craft is right – whichever school the place follows.

Neapolitan or Roman? The difference

Neapolitan pizza is soft: the dough is matured for a long time, stays moist and rises very quickly at high heat. That gives a tall, airy rim and a centre that is still juicy – it is eaten with knife and fork rather than by hand. The topping stays sparse: tomato, mozzarella, basil, oil.

Roman pizza is rolled out flat, baked longer at a lower temperature and is thin and crisp across the whole surface. It carries more topping and in Rome is also sold as a rectangular slice from the tray, by weight. How to tell them apart at the table: a tall, soft rim against an evenly thin base that cracks.