Perfect Pizzas and the Best Female Chef 🍕

Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to start picking your dough, fall in love with one Canadian chef, and learn the subtle joy of being underprepared

Hi there!

What I’m proudest of, and always forget: seven years of food newsletters where you never had to comment “recipe” to get a recipe in your DMs.

Fuck you, forced engagement.

Piero

✹Asano Inio, Solanin. This year I've been exploring the hyper-vast manga world, that's where this quote comes from.

All the pizza you'll ever need

There are a billion ways you can write a book about pizza. This one is probably the one that has all the pizza dough recipes you'll ever need in your life: Pizza al Taglio (★recipe), Pugliese (★recipe), Go-To Pizza, Same-Day Pizza, Toasted Flour Pizza, New York-Style, Chicago Thin Crust, Detroit-Style (★recipe), Skillet Pizza, "Nearly Neapolitan", Pizza Bianca, Pizzette (Small Pizzas), Focaccia (★recipe). Maurizio never misses a formula, and we just have to follow his rules, buy some good flour, maybe a couple of blue steel pans, and use a ove capable at least of 230° C. For we, the nerds the book includes QR codes to watch technique and recipe videos.

🍕The Perfect Pizza by Maurizio Leo
→ Shortplot: 🍕🍕🍕🍕

I ate lunch near my grandfather’s village. Days later, the world noticed (sort of)

Two strange things happened to me this year.

The first: I had lunch at the restaurant of the woman who, a few days later, was named the world’s best female chef. The second: that restaurant sits a few hundred meters from the countryside village in the province of Modena where one of my grandfathers was born.

So one of the people now pointing to the present/future of world cuisine works on land tied to my past. A past that looked like azarole crabapple and bruised knees, pork meat grilled over embers built from the drum of an old washing machine, lambrusco in glasses - all foam, fried gnocco (★recipe) with cured meats, jam tarts topped with strips of tagliatelle dough instead of a normal crumble (★recipe).

Jessica Rosval landed in that very countryside from Canada. At 15, she worked after school in a small family restaurant in Montreal. Her job was to seat guests. But she kept looking at the kitchen. Cooks moved between fire, pans and shouting, like what she called a band of cheerful pirates. She wanted in.

In 2013 she landed at Osteria Francescana. She was 25. She did not speak Italian. A dinner at Massimo Bottura’s table hit her like lightning. She asked for an interview and joined the brigade, starting on the antipasti station.

Then came the hard part. She had studied Italian technique and theory. But she had to unlearn habits. Less fat, fewer aromatics. She did not erase her training. She added a second culture to the first.

She moved on to Casa Maria Luigia, the countryside residence of Bottura and Lara Gilmore near Modena. Today she leads its restaurant, Al Gatto Verde. It holds one Michelin star and the green star for sustainability.

Outside the kitchen, she co-founded Roots with her friend Caroline Caporossi. It is a non-profit restaurant-workshop that gives migrant women paid professional training. In 2024 they won the Champions of Change award from The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. On November 5th in Lima, Rosval won Best Female Chef. Al Gatto Verde also landed at number 24 on the list, the second best Italian restaurant.

Fire is the thread. But it is a quiet fire. Embers, smoke, wood, never shouting. Seasonality matters. So do the garden and the local producers. Every dish talks to her Canadian roots and to Emilian tradition.

She told her dishes are love letters to the place she chose to live.

Take this. The borlengo, a thin fried Modenese winter food, like a fat crêpe. For me it is pure local memory. A Canadian woman, who arrived in Italy not knowing the language, was handling it with care (★recipe). That is another way she got me.

Writer Valentina Dirindin goes further than I dare. She called Rosval the best chef in Italy. Not the best woman, just the best. Her key trait, she writes, is a “measured boldness”. Rosval dares, but never overdoes it. She serves cotechino at a gala. She puts Sicilian pineapple on spaghetti, in a dessert called “Pineapple pasta”. She builds recognizable dishes. And she knows a dish sometimes needs a story.

I agree with every word.

So what did I have at that lunch made by Rosval and her team? Candies with Modena white ricotta, walnuts, pomegranate (ricotta from local cows, good as expected); Cedarwood smoked cod, crab butter, olive (best dish of the day); Beef with Bordeaux sauce, potato tatin, truffle; Mountain milk semifreddo, caramelized whey, sea pine (one of the rare times you get an enjoyable dessert in starred restaurant).

Wine. The 2018 La Grande Dame Rosé is 90% Pinot Noir and 10% Chardonnay. You probably know they get white Champagne from red grapes. After that, its deep cherry color comes from red Pinot Noir from the Clos Colin parcel in Bouzy. It smells floral and raspberryish, then shows ripe, vinous raspberry and cherry fruit, delicate rather than heavy, with a faint bitter edge on the finish that adds structure and freshness. 2018 was a hot year and the vintage reflected that richness. If you are into scores, this is fairly a 90/100 bottle.

🏛️Short sad story: a Greek restaurant closes after 45 years, and says goodbye giving away its sauce recipe 👨🏾‍🍳The 50 Best Restaurants 2026: on top is Asador Etxebarri, "The Basque master of the barbecue" 🍺The Vittles Pub Guide 2026: Central London 🏆2026 Eater Award Winners The best restaurants, chefs, bars and bakeries of the year, according to Eater’s editors 🇫🇷French far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said American immigration policies look like a layered cake

The rise of the overprepared concertgoer

Cassidy Sollazzo / Paste Magazine

More and more fans arrive at concerts with the setlist already memorized. Notes after reading: does the same happen at the table? If you read the menu, the reviews and the photos before booking, are you still looking for surprise, or just verifying? Is a restaurant that refuses to be spoiled a risk or an advantage?

AI Is Making Restaurant Customers Behave Strangely

Elizabeth G. Dunn / New York Magazine

New York restaurateurs say diners now outsource their side of the evening to AI. Chatbots write lawyerly complaints and fake-empathy requests, agents book tables that get padded or cancelled, and a Rednote-famous table at Crevette fills up with guests who bring their own food. The point: hospitality runs on an unspoken pact between host and guest, and a machine can’t hold up its end.