Just like my journey from homebrewer to a professional brewer, my interest in pizza started a long time ago.

When we were young, my family would spend more time in one restaurant than any other. In fact, I’ve probably eaten in Pizza Pomodoro in Coleraine—on Northern Ireland’s Causeway Coast—more than anywhere else. The venue was much like any local Italian restaurant in the British Isles, perhaps given a little more legitimacy due to Italian immigration to Ireland in the 19th Century. It had all of the mainstays you would expect from such an establishment—red glass candle holders, personal portions of lasagna cooked in a ceramic dish, tediously traditional music, and superfluous side salads with black olives.

Photography by Hannah Vigers

This is the period I refer to as the experimental phase. I was young, starting to find my voice, and wanted to try it all. A simple question—why just pineapple?—led me down a dark path of messing with other fruit adjuncts until we had gone too far. For a while my go-to pizza at Pizza Pom, as we called it, was Chicken, Ham, and Banana. This was my Triple-Fruited Gose era, and for this, I am ashamed.

Fast-forward to 2019, almost two decades since practically declaring war on Italy with my banana blasphemy, I was back living in Edinburgh for the second time in my life, setting up Newbarns Brewery, where I work. Just as I had become jaded from years of living and working in the beer industry, going through black, brut, and session IPAs, my taste in pizza had become similarly particular, as I became obsessed with simplicity, and precision. Enter: my margherita era.

““I looked up from the pizza to my partner, Han, and...declared that it was going to be the best pizza of my life.””

I had convinced myself that if helles lager was the pinnacle of brewing perfection, trying to give focus to the four main components of beer—malt, hops, water, barley—without hiding behind adjuncts, and off flavours, the margherita pizza is surely the equivalent in solid form.

For a while, I became obsessed with this self-assigned quest and set out to try a margherita pizza in every possible place in Edinburgh. On January 7th 2020 the first post on the account I was using to log my experiences, @margher_eater, was made on Instagram. Over the next few weeks and months, I would eat and review only margherita pizzas and record my findings to this account. Somewhat thankfully, this madness was put to a screeching halt by the Covid-19 pandemic. If it wasn’t for the lockdown I fear I might have sunk so deep into the rabbit hole that was cheese, tomato and (crucially,) basil, on bread.

Nowadays my tastes in pizza have changed again. Having ruined margheritas for myself, I now have two go-to options depending on how I feel, how hard my day has been and—this part is critical—how many beers I’ve consumed.

The first harks back to my childhood and reaffirms something that my younger self had right all along, something that the curious, one-day scientist had to learn for himself—why just pineapple? That’s right folks, I’m a Hawaiian guy now.

Yes, I have opinions on pizza, and pineapple belongs on it. But just not with ham. It is with pepperoni that pineapple finds its contemporary in pizza perfection. The sweet acidity of the pineapple cuts through the rich, greasiness and spice of the pepperoni, begging you to have one more slice. However, I can’t take the credit for discovering this heavenly combination That accolade goes to fellow brewer, Pellicle contributor, and combination guru Reece Hugill of Donzoko Brewing. I’m merely an advocate for the ‘Reece Special’ as it has become known, and I urge you to give it a go, regardless of whether you’re a pineapple pessimist or an ananas ambassador.

But it’s my other, more serious, more sober choice that brought me here today: the Sicilian; specifically the Sicilian pizza at De Superette in Gent. The best pizza of my life wasn’t found in Naples, nor was it found in New York, Chicago, or New Haven, Connecticut, but on a recent trip to Belgium.

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Although not known to me at the time, a chance encounter with my friend chef Moray Lamb of Edinburgh restaurant Eleanore led me to De Superette. It was he who told me I should visit De Superette; the restaurant that his former employer Pam Brunton of Inver restaurant, helped to open in 2014, after a stint at sister restaurant, In De Wulf.

““That’s not to say I want to eat thin crust pizza, because honestly, fuck thin crust.””

Despite the recommendation and numerous accolades, including being named one of the best pizzas in Europe in 2020, I didn’t big up De Superette too much. I’ve been let down too many times in the past with must-try foods (remember the KFC Double Down?) And so, myself and my partner, Han, arrived at De Superette on an unusually hot September evening in late 2022 and ordered a couple of pizzas to share.

The menu was minimal, focussing on the classics, with no more than ten options including a few specials. It was clear from the way the ingredients were listed and the kitchen was laid out—one chef on prep, the other, baker Sarah Lemke, solely on pizza duty—that this was a place that focussed on quality over quantity.

Gazing down at my Silician pizza I felt a rush of thoughts fly through my head. All of the opinions I had on the perfect pizza from the level of charring to the ratio of sauce to crust, to how it smelled, everything was telling me this was the one. I looked up from the pizza to my partner, who is well-versed in my passion for pies and without even tasting it, declared that it was the best pizza of my life.

Picking up my first slice cemented these feelings. For all of its greatness, the much-lauded Neapolitan-style pizza suffers from a sogginess and wet base more often than not. This can result in the base not being strong enough to support the amount of sauce, which makes a good pizza a great one. That’s not to say I want to eat thin crust pizza, because honestly, fuck thin crust. The perfect pizza should feel nice to hold. No spilling of toppings, undignified piling of congealing mozzarella into your mouth, or sauce on your trousers. A great pizza will hold onto its sauce and toppings with ease, in this case, supported by a strong sourdough base—another pizza trend which can often detract from the end result.

Moving to finally taste the pizza, after long periods of simply admiring its form, I was overwhelmed initially by the length of the sauce’s flavour. A good sauce should have acidity, sweetness, and a good tomato flavour. It should be well-seasoned and should ideally contain some oregano, and garlic, but none of these elements should dominate. There should be enough sauce to cover the entire base of the pizza, and cause the sourdough base to show what it’s made of and keep everything together. The ratio of cheese to sauce is also crucial, but in short, there needs to be cheese on every slice. De Superette had everything nailed, it was faultless.

Sicilian-style pizza can mean a lot of things, but in my opinion generally involves capers, olives and occasionally anchovies, which if done correctly can be a perfect saline sensation, but if done wrong can be a salty, inedible mess.

What they did at De Superette was replace black olives with an olive tapenade. I’m not usually a fan of olives on pizza, or in general, due to their texture (and, crucially, through bad childhood experiences of my uncle bribing me with a pound to eat them for my family’s amusement at the aforementioned Pizza Pomodoro.) This was then balanced with the nutty, sweetness of pine nuts and basil, creating a balance of flavour that was so well-executed that I was left dumbstruck by how good it was. Thankfully Han was able to capture my reaction on camera for the world to see just how much I was in love with this pizza.

Finally, the pièce de résistance—the crust. The story of a great pie doesn’t end with the toppings. The crust of even a good pizza can be dry, dense and bland. If done well, and this is where sourdough pizza can really shine, there should be an airy, doughy crust with a good level of char for flavour. But all this is useless without a key ingredient, which at De Superette came with the pizza, without any need to ask, and that ingredient is dip. Whether it’s dependable mayonnaise, some sort of fancy pesto creation, or in this case, the perfect aioli, a good crust dip is key to the polishing off of a fine pie. And in this case, it was the finest of pies.

It’s with deep regret that I sadly have to tell you that De Superette closed its doors for good on November 20th 2022. Your legacy will live on as the best pizza I’ve ever had, but sadly, none of you reading this will ever get to try it.