Budapest pizzeria offers ancient Rome-inspired pieAP, BUDAPESTIn Hungary’s capital, a city best known for its goulash, a pizzeria is inviting diners to travel back two millennia to a time before tomatoes, mozzarella or even the word “pizza” were known in Europe. At Neverland Pizzeria in central Budapest, founder Josep Zara and his team have created a limited-edition pie using only ingredients that would have been available in ancient Rome, long before what we know today as pizza ever existed. However, Romans did eat oven-baked flatbreads topped with herbs, cheeses and sauces, the direct ancestors of modern pizza, which were often sold in ancient Roman snack bars called thermopolia. “We sat down to imagine what we might be able to make using these ingredients, and without using things like tomatoes and mozzarella,” Zara said. “Our creation can be called a modern pizza from the perspective that we tried to make it comprehensible for everyone,” Bardossy said.

Source: Taipei Times February 21, 2026 18:26 UTC