Gianluca Legrottaglie Gianluca Legrottaglie

Every gastronomic movement needs a point of origin. A place, a date, a person who, perhaps without fully imagining the scope of what they are doing, opens a path. For pinsa romana in North America, that point is called Montesacro. San Francisco, 2015. A small restaurant born on what was then a difficult street, inside a building with a history of ovens and bread, became the first American outpost of a product that until then belonged mainly to Rome and to a still limited circle of people who knew it. Behind that transition is Gianluca Legrottaglie, a Roman from Centocelle, entrepreneur, restaurateur, man of service and vision, able to read the potential of a dough before many others. The 2025 Guide to the Best Pinserie in the World placed Montesacro eighth in the Top 10, recognising not only the quality of the product, but also its historical role: being the first restaurant to open the way for pinsa romana in the North American market. This is not a detail, but a responsibility. Because those who arrive first must not only serve a product well: they must explain it, defend it, give it credibility and create an audience.

New York was his true American school. He worked for seven years at Il Buco, from 1999 to 2005, then joined Aurora, an Italian restaurant where he took on his first important managerial role. From 2005 to 2010 he grew as a hospitality professional, opened other venues with the group, and dealt with management, service, wine and the American public. These were years in which Italian cuisine in the United States was changing: less postcard, more research, more craftsmanship, more territorial identity. Gianluca formed himself within this transition, carrying Rome with him while learning to speak the language of the American market. At first, the idea was not pinsa. Gianluca was thinking of a Roman pizzeria, with a wood-fired oven, a project consistent with his desire to bring an authentic part of Roman culture to San Francisco. He found a space one block from Fifty Four Mint, started the works and imagined the format. Then he returned to Rome for research, to taste, understand and update himself. And it was there, in the last days of the trip, that the unexpected happened. His father, whom Gianluca describes with irony as the last person one would trust to choose a restaurant, took him to eat a “special pizza” in the very area of his childhood. They went to La Fraschetta 2, on the same road where he had grown up, where he had learned to ride a bicycle. On the menu he read an almost mythological definition: “Pinsa Romana, the pizza of the gods.” At the table were Gianluca, his wife and his parents. An oval shape arrived, fragrant and unfamiliar. Gianluca was sceptical, ready to judge. Then he cut it, heard the sound, felt the crunch, took the first bite. He could not tell whether it was bread or pizza. But he knew it was delicious.

“Those who arrive first must not only serve a product well: they must explain it, defend it, give it credibility.”

He ordered a Margherita, because for him it is the most honest test, the one that reveals everything. They took one to share, almost cautiously. After the first bite, they immediately ordered another. It was the moment when a project changed direction. Gianluca asked the owner where the bases came from, was directed to a laboratory in Torre Angela, Ahò Pizza, and from there traced everything back to the flour, to Corrado Di Marco. He was not interested in ready-made bases: he wanted to understand the material, to reach the source. The meeting with Corrado Di Marco lasted three hours and overturned his plan. They spoke about dough, electric ovens, the differences compared with gas and wood, and a product born in the early 2000s but not yet arrived in the United States. Before leaving, Gianluca asked the decisive question: who is making pinsa in America? The answer was simple: no one yet. That was where the choice began. He went home with some bases to test and with the feeling, as he describes through a beautiful image, of being Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the commandments. He told his wife: we are changing everything, we are bringing pinsa to America.

The change was not only conceptual, but technical, logistical and economic. In San Francisco, the project already underway had to be modified. No more wood-fired oven: they would use an electric oven. In a context where a wood-fired oven would have had great scenic and symbolic value, Gianluca chose coherence with the product. The first pallets of flour arrived from Rome, and with them the need for a spiral mixer, which not everyone in the United States understood. They suggested a planetary mixer; he insisted: he needed the spiral, he needed to create the gluten structure correctly, he needed to respect what he had learned. Then there was the question of people. He needed a pizzaiolo able to enter a technical world that was still new. Alessandro Delle Rose arrived, young and with golden hands, able to modify and improve the dough. With him, Montesacro found its path. At first, they worked on pre-baked bases, but Gianluca kept perceiving an enormous difference between pre-baked and express pinsa. From an artisanal point of view, he was not satisfied. The choice became drastic: the bases already prepared were turned into breadcrumbs so as not to waste them, and the decision was made to work express. From that moment, Montesacro built its identity on a clear principle: dough made from scratch, long times, no shortcuts.

Time is the heart of his philosophy. For Gianluca, a great pinsa romana cannot be born from haste. Those who try to accelerate, compress processes or reduce maturation may perhaps obtain a functional product, but not reach a high level. He is firm on this: one must be patient and allow the dough to follow its own path. His comparison with wine is illuminating. Wine is made in the vineyard, he says, not in the cellar: in the cellar, one develops what has been built before. In the same way, pinsa is made during fermentation, in sensitivity to temperature and humidity, in respect for the material. For this reason, he refuses a twenty-four-hour dough. He speaks of an enormous difference. Hydration percentages can vary, from 82 to 75 per cent, but the essential point remains clarity about timing. This, according to him, is what has given Montesacro consistency over the years. Consistency not as immobility, but as reliability. Every day the dough may change, every service may bring variables, but the philosophy must remain firm. On pre-baking, Gianluca does not deny that it can produce important results if executed perfectly. But for him it remains a different product from what he expects from pinsa. Montesacro works without pre-baking: it takes the dough ball, stretches it and bakes it. It is a more complex approach, less convenient, more demanding during service. But it is the one that returns the fragrance, depth and energy he seeks. In his view, pinsa must not only be correct: it must be alive.

Over time, the project grew. After San Francisco came Portland, then Brooklyn in 2019, in collaboration with Gianluca’s former employers in New York. Brooklyn continues to work very well, thanks also to Luca Mastrogiacomo, whom Gianluca describes as a pizzaiolo of great consistency. Then the pandemic resized many plans: Chicago, Los Angeles, Texas and other possibilities remained suspended or were reconsidered. Growth became more prudent. Montesacro also opened in San Francisco’s Marina district, then Walnut Creek, while some choices were revised in order to find a better balance between business, family and personal life. A beautiful part of the story concerns legacy. Montesacro has trained people, inspired restaurants and generated a movement. Leo Cugnata, now leading Pinsa Rossa and fourth in the 2025 Top 10, spent two years as a student of Montesacro. Gianluca speaks of him with sincere pride: a double victory, he says, to see a former collaborator reach such a high position and at the same time see Montesacro confirmed among the best. There is also Alessandro Iacobelli in Los Angeles, struck by the pinsa he tasted at Montesacro and then driven to train in Rome. Being first also means this: seeing others take that road, perhaps even surpass you in the ranking, and still feeling its value.

In the end, Gianluca Legrottaglie’s story is one of a change of course. He was supposed to open a Roman pizzeria and opened the first American pinseria. He was supposed to install a wood-fired oven and chose electric. He could have used pre-baked bases and preferred express service. He could have stopped at the initial success and continued instead to push the point of arrival further ahead. Montesacro was born like this: from a series of right deviations, from a taste able to change a project, from a vision that transformed a Roman product into an international language.