Leo Cugnata Leo Cugnata

Leo Cugnata often returns to one word when he speaks about his work: consistency. Not only the consistency of the dough, although for pinsa that is a decisive matter, a living balance between a crisp exterior and a soft, airy centre. Consistency also means continuity: the ability to maintain the same standard every evening, the same rhythm, the same promise. In San Francisco, a city accustomed to absorbing cuisines, trends and gastronomic visions from all over the world, Pinsa Rossa has found its place through this very idea: not chasing an easy effect, but building a solid and recognisable identity.

Leo’s story begins long before America. His relationship with flour and water started when he was fifteen, in Sicily, working in his cousins’ bakery. At first, it was almost a lesson in life. His father encouraged him to work, to learn a craft, to understand the value of time and money. But what could have remained a summer experience became something deeper. “I have always had a love for flour and water,” he says. Today, at thirty-three, he can look back on eighteen years spent inside this world of doughs, waiting times, temperatures, hands, mistakes, corrections and memory.

His arrival in San Francisco in 2016 marked a turning point. Until then, pinsa had not been part of his technical background. He discovered it while working at Montesacro, one of the places that helped introduce and define the product in the Californian city. For him, it was an immediate revelation: a different product, lighter and airier, with a personality able to stand apart from pizza and speak to an international audience. From there began a very practical learning process, made of different kitchens, different teams, direct observation and technique absorbed service after service. Leo is clear about this: every restaurant, every team, every oven left him something. Whenever you enter a new place, he says, you try to take the best things with you.

Success, however, is never just a question of location. Leo knows this well. A beautiful restaurant can attract people once, but it does not guarantee that they will return. They come back when the product works, when the experience leaves a mark, when the customer feels that behind a pinsa there is a precise idea. Today, Pinsa Rossa works with impressive numbers: a restaurant with around sixty seats that, on the busiest evenings, can serve hundreds of covers. It is the sign of a well-honed mechanism, but also of trust that has been earned. “People come, they appreciate it, and they return,” Leo says. For a restaurateur, there is no more tangible recognition.

In the 2025 edition of the Guide to the Best Pinserie in the World, Pinsa Rossa reached fourth place in the overall Top 10, also winning two special awards: Pinsa Ardita of the Year and Best Ambience. These recognitions reflect the two complementary souls of the project. On one side, the ability to dare, to move beyond the most predictable repertoire, to create a pinsa that can surprise without losing balance. On the other, the strength of a place, an atmosphere, an idea of hospitality that makes pinsa not only a product to taste, but an experience to live.

“The pinsa must always arrive with the same consistency, the same fragrance, the same identity.”

The Pinsa Ardita of the Year award is linked to the Pistachio Obsession, a creation Leo describes with naturalness, almost as the logical consequence of his way of thinking. Pecorino cream, mozzarella, pistachio pesto and crumbs, yellow confit cherry tomatoes, pecorino and black pepper: a rich, intense, deliberately indulgent composition, yet built around balance. In the transcript, Leo also mentions guanciale among the elements of the creation, while the official menu offers the possibility of adding prosciutto San Daniele. It is a detail that shows how these recipes can live, evolve and adapt, while preserving a recognisable identity. What matters to Leo is the quality of the product: when the ingredient is right, when it has character, when it tells a story, even a non-Italian audience can feel the difference.

Quality, in his words, is never abstract. It means flours, tomatoes, cheeses, cured meats, olive oil, but also proportion. It means bringing Italy to the table without turning it into a stereotype. San Francisco is open, curious and gastronomically sophisticated, but also demanding. The public may not always know the deeper codes of Italian food, and that is precisely why the ingredient must speak directly. Leo talks about tomatoes with an Italian flavour, products able to stand apart from what people taste elsewhere. Pinsa thus becomes a bridge: Roman technique, Sicilian sensitivity, the Californian market, Italian ingredients and international taste.

Technically, his story goes straight to the heart of the matter. For Leo, pinsa is made of simple but decisive details. The water must be very cold, almost icy, because the dough has to undergo a long fermentation, between forty-eight and seventy-two hours. The way the dough balls are closed matters, as does the air retained inside, the pressure of the hands and the stretching. Above all, what matters is the ability to repeat every step correctly. Long fermentation is not a magic formula, but a process to be governed. A mistake in temperature, dough management or stretching can compromise lightness, alveolation and fragrance.

One of Leo’s clearest choices concerns service. At Pinsa Rossa, he does not rely on pre-baking as his main method. He prepares the dough balls, lets them mature, then stretches the dough at the moment of the order. The reason is clear: for him, an express pinsa preserves more fragrance, remains more alive, and better reflects the product he wants to serve. He does not criticise pre-baking, which he recognises as valid when properly managed, but he underlines how complex it can be during service. If a pre-baked pinsa is topped too early or without the right resting time, it can lose structure, collapse or become too dry. Better to make the table wait two more minutes, he says, than to serve a pinsa without character.

This philosophy says a great deal about his idea of hospitality. During service, especially when orders begin to pile up, the temptation is to speed up, simplify and give in to pressure. Leo insists instead on the standard. The pinsa must always arrive with the same consistency, the same fragrance, the same identity. In this sense, technique also becomes professional ethics. It is not enough to make a good dough once: you must be able to do it well every day, during every shift, even when the restaurant is full and the kitchen is running at full speed.

That is why the team is central. Leo speaks of the team as the most important thing. No success is built on a single person, especially in a restaurant working with significant numbers. You need a group moving in the same direction, people who know the product and have absorbed the method. Many collaborators have worked with him for years, and this allows Pinsa Rossa to maintain continuity even when Leo is not physically in the kitchen. Quality becomes a shared heritage, not an individual gesture.

His way of creating new recipes combines intuition and verification. Before adding a pinsa to the menu, Leo looks for feedback, makes people taste it, listens. He wants to understand whether his intuition works for others too. It is a very concrete approach: the chef’s instinct matters, but the product must meet the real pleasure of the guests. Sweetness, saltiness, creaminess, crunch, acidity, savouriness: everything must find its proportion. When extravagance appears, it must never turn into confusion.

Looking to the future, Leo speaks of growth, but without haste. Pinsa Rossa has the ambition to develop, perhaps to become something larger, but not at the cost of losing control. It is a mature position, especially in a market like the United States, where the success of a format can quickly push towards expansion. Leo prefers to consolidate, to move carefully, not to grow only to fall. It is the same logic as dough: time is not an obstacle, but a necessary condition.

In the end, his story shows what pinsa can become outside Italy when it meets skilled hands and a clear vision. Not simply an alternative to pizza, not a product to be explained through slogans, but an autonomous gastronomic language able to bring together lightness, technique and creativity. In San Francisco, Leo Cugnata has built this language from an ancient and everyday gesture: flour, water, waiting. Everything else has come through work, through the team, through listening to customers and through that consistency which, for him, remains the true secret of every great pinsa.