La Bersagliera In Lucca

22/08/2024: Large city margherita pizza in a pan in the electric oven, correct quality and price. The cecina is also good.....but the pizza even better....

18/08/2024: I was born and raised in Viareggio, and as a child, living in the centre, on Sunday evenings my father always went to get pizza from "Rizzieri", next to the Municipality. It was the 90s and that pizza was, by far, the best in the whole city... Or better... There were two major factions: Those who liked fine, "Athos" in Passeggiata, while those who liked it a little higher, "Rizzieri" in common. As I grew up however, and occasionally returned to Rizzieri, I felt that something was changing... I wondered how it was possible that the pizza I had loved so much as a child, and which I couldn't wait to eat every Sunday, was starting to taste less good. Be careful, I'm not saying that she had become bad, on the contrary... But, how can I say... It was no longer the pizza I knew. I found it less digestible, and Cecina also seemed different to me. I blamed myself, I convinced myself that it was me who had changed and that perhaps I had different tastes, or that I had eaten way too much and had become bored. Over time I started to eat less and less, also thanks to the increase in pizzerias in the city and the variety of types and flavors that you could find on the market. I tried to take it again, every now and then, but unfortunately, there was no way... I no longer felt the same sensations. I had given up, thinking that now, even though I was a true pizza lover, I could no longer experience that true pleasure I had when I was little. Today, in 2022, I have already been living in Torre del Lago Puccini for a few years and only by chance did I stumble upon this pizzeria "da Simone". One evening I found myself needing to eat something in the Ex Airfield area and I ended up there, by chance. Obviously I took Pizza and Cecina. As soon as I took the first bite, there was something that didn't sit right with me... I almost got scared, because I immediately, and without understanding why, jumped back 30 years. Was that perhaps the best pizza in all of Viareggio that I remembered? I couldn't understand how it was possible that I was experiencing emotions of that kind, I didn't understand... Tasting the cecina then... Well guys, it brought tears to my eyes from how good it was... If for taste, pizza is also a matter of personal choice... cecina is a kind of axiom, a culinary creation where, either you do it really well, or there is always something that doesn't add up between taste, consistency, digestibility. Either it's fantastic, or it's not... And Simone's cecina is much better than "fantastic", it is INIMITABLE! Once dinner was finished, I went to pay and had confirmation of what my unconscious had already understood after the first bite, projecting me back in time. Simone, as well as the more experienced lady who works there, were the same people who worked at Rizzieri in the 90s. Then I imagine that the brothers split over the pizzeria in the center of the town, and that Simone opened at the Airfield... Today, in 2022, I will always be grateful for that late summer day when I stumbled upon this pizzeria by chance. Today I can finally go back to eating the best pizza in Viareggio, the pizza from when I was a child. Today there is one more opponent in the fight against training and diet... an enemy that I will never be able to truly defeat, and which actually motivates me to train even more, because I cannot go without eating THIS pizza and THIS chickpea. So I write this papyrus, which probably no one will read in full, not even Simone... I'm writing it to you anyway because I feel more comfortable writing rather than speaking... I'm writing to him to tell him: THANK YOU for still existing. THANK YOU for continuing to make pizza and cecina as you know how to do, without compromising. THANK YOU for giving me the certainty that, even if the day can go wrong, whatever happened, in the evening I know, that by ordering pizza from you, I can go back to being a child, and still be happy, grateful, and carefree, like when on Sunday evenings my father brought home pizza and we all ate it together... THANK YOU 🙏