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The chef at Della Porta Trattoria, a native of Naples, is one of 56 in the U.S. certified in making true Neapolitan pizzas. The restaurant also serves pastas and other Italian foods and beverages.
ELLISON BAY – One of Door County’s new brunch places by day is now also an Italian restaurant by night.
And, it’s not your typical Italian restaurant found in our country.
As the name indicates, Della Porta Trattoria e Pizzeria Napoletana is serving authentic cuisine from Naples and the Amalfi Coast of southern Italy, as well as authentic Neapolitan pizza created by a certified Neapolitan pizza maker who’s a native of Naples. There are vegan and gluten-free dishes, and most items on the menu have gluten-free options. Most ingredients are either locally sourced or imported from Italy.
“What (Chef Robin Brown) is doing is modern Italian (cuisine), what they’re doing in Italy today,” said Joe Ouimet, one of four partners in the business.
The new restaurant is open five nights a week in the same space in Ellison Bay as Blue Bear, the cafe and brunch restaurant that opened last year in the spot that formerly housed the Viking Grill, the longtime family diner known for its fish boils. Besides the pizzas, there’s antipasti, pastas, main courses, desserts and beverages that include a list of Italian and West Coast wines.
Here’s what’s happening at Della Porta.
It’s its own restaurant
Although Della Porta and Blue Bear are sharing both kitchen and dining space and are owned by the same four partners (Brown and Ouimet with Della Porta, Joe Schulte and Tesa Santoro-Schulte for Blue Bear), they are two totally different restaurants. Brown and Ouimet are responsible for what happens with Della Porta while the Schultes operate Blue Bear.
Della Porta eventually will move its dining room and kitchen into the building out back on the property where the fish boils used to be held. That area is being remodeled into an open-kitchen concept, including the wood-fired pizza oven that was installed outside the kitchen last week but will move inside when the building is ready. Ouimet said he expects the building to open this fall.
In the meantime, diners can sit inside the current restaurant or out on the patio in front of and alongside the building.
Also, the space fronting the building that will become the permanent Della Porta is being converted into a kind of piazza, as Ouimet described it, where Italian small plates will be served − antipasti, Italian-style charcuterie boards and the like − and people can relax, get wine and beverages from the outdoor bar, and play bocce and other games. That space should be open by the end of June, Ouimet said.
The Italian chef with the English-sounding name
Brown jokes about his name not sounding like he would be from Italy, as does Ouimet, who said he’s also of Italian descent although his surname is of French origin.
Brown’s father was a U.S. citizen and his mother is from Naples. He was born there and lived in Europe for 32 years before coming to America.
More noteworthy, some of Brown’s family operated restaurants in Italy, and one of his family members helps run VPN Americas, the American/Canadian/Mexican delegation of the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana, an international organization that promotes and regulates designations for authentic Neapolitan pizza.
Brown held executive chef and consulting positions in Naples, London and Miami. In 2018, he was asked if he could give a hand at a new pizzeria in downtown Milwaukee that was struggling with staffing.
“Ten days later, I got on a plane and I was in Milwaukee,” Brown said. “I didn’t even know where Milwaukee was. I knew about it − I watched ‘Happy Days’ (laughs).”
That was at San Giorgio Pizzeria Napoletana, a sister restaurant to Milwaukee’s long-popular Calderone Club, both owned and operated by Chef Gino Fazzari. Brown became executive chef at San Giorgio, where he won a fourth-place medal at the World Olympics of Neapolitan Pizza in Naples and won an international recipe contest featuring Grande Cheese Fior di Latte mozzarella. He also became a VPN-certified master pizza maker.
The VPN designation
As noted, the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana, or VPN, sets strict rules for what is a Neapolitan pizza, what it’s made with (they have a list of approved ingredients and suppliers, notably Double Zero flour and tomatoes from a certain region of Italy), how the dough is made and fermented, and how it’s cooked.
The group also designates pizzerias and chefs around the world who follow those rules and meet other qualifications as officially certified Neapolitan pizza makers.
Brown is one of 56 VPN-certified master pizza makers in the U.S. (as is Fazzari, his mentor), and San Giorgio is one of 92 certified Neapolitan pizzerias in the country and four in Wisconsin. None are north of Sheboygan.
So, although Della Porta isn’t yet VPN-certified, it offers one of the few chances in Wisconsin to find true Neapolitan pizza and food made by a certified pizza maker.
So, what is Neapolitan pizza (and authentic Italian cuisine)?
The pizza you get from most pizza joints in America, whether a national chain or locally owned, thin crust or pan crust, isn’t like a Neapolitan pizza.
The first thing you notice is the crust. It’s soft but with a little tinge of crispiness on it, with a pillowy, airy outer rim. You fold it lengthwise before eating it, making it kind of like a taco.
As for the toppings, Brown said the basic idea is to keep it simple and fresh. For example, his margherita pizza has tomato sauce made from scratch, smoked mozzarella, basil leaves and olive oil, nothing else. Nothing like the “supreme” pizzas with eight or 10 different ingredients one finds elsewhere.
Of course, it’s not ordinary tomatoes and cheeses going on top of the dough. Brown said he uses tomatoes that are raised in a valley between two mountains near the sea near Naples; he said winds that come off the water and into the valley impart a tinge of salt and mineral flavors to balance the flavor.
The trick is then in the baking, which you can’t do at home unless you have one heck of an oven. The pizza bakes for only 60 to 90 seconds at temperatures of 900 to 950 degrees, in Della Porta’s case in a domed oven built by Acunti, an Italian family company that’s been in the pizza oven business for four-plus generations.
That way, Brown and Ouimet said, the dough retains its softness and lightness while still getting a little crisp, and the ingredients get warm but don’t melt so much that they run into each other, allowing the diner to taste their full flavor.
“The flavors are freshness and simplicity,” Ouimet said. “You really taste the ingredients − the fewer, the better.”
That goes for the pastas and other dishes on Della Porta’s menu. Brown said true Italian food isn’t as complex, nor as heavy, as the more familiar Italian-American dishes.
He said it’s also a labor of love. While the pizzas are baked quickly, sauces can take a couple days to come together to bring out the intensity of the flavors, and Brown said cooks and chefs plan meals several days in advance.
“It’s all about time, all about the concentration of flavors from very few ingredients,” Brown said. “We don’t use heavy cream, don’t use butter. In Italy, all the dairy goes to make the cheese. … They don’t even know what marinara sauce is in Italy, or Alfredo sauce. That’s Italian-American cuisine.”
Ouimet also noted the communal aspect of Italian dining. Meals are something to be enjoyed with other people and savored, not rushed through.
“It’s enjoying everything from the freshness of the ingredients to the experience of enjoying them together,” Ouimet said.
“(In Italy,) we love our food, adjust schedules for our food,” Brown said.
Joining a ‘foodie destination’ in Ellison Bay
Brown said he visited Door County often during the COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2020 and that some parts of the Peninsula remind him of the Amalfi Coast of his homeland.
“During COVID, Door County had been my go-to place during weekends,” Brown said.
He also said that as the pandemic wound down, he saw crime increasing around where he worked in downtown Milwaukee, with several of his staff members being victimized, and he started feeling insecure about working there.
He and Ouimet knew the Schultes, who were operating the original Blue Bear in Racine, and the Schultes’ daughter worked for Brown at San Giorgio. Brown said they’d talked about going into a restaurant partnership in Door County if the opportunity arose. Which it did when the owner of Viking Grill retired.
“We got a call from their daughter last July (saying) they had bought the Viking restaurant, and they have this structure out back,” Brown said. “We had a conversation with them a few years ago. We told each other that the first time someone found something in Door County, we should go up there.”
The Schultes opened Door County’s Blue Bear last year, and Brown and Ouimet got Della Porta rolling with one preview dinner service in March and another in April. Those trial runs proved hugely successful.
“We did a couple of preview events in March and April,” Ouimet said. “No advertising, word of mouth, and we had 160 people. We sold out, were completely booked up.”
To some, it might seem a unique dining experience like this would fit better in one of the better-known hotbeds of the Door County tourist industry like Fish Creek or Sister Bay.
But Brown noted that the community is home to a number of distinctive, highly regarded restaurants, such as Blue Bear, Wickman House with its fine dining and Hugel Haus with its German cuisine. And Ouimet said people have noticed, with diners coming to the spring preview dinners from as far away as Sturgeon Bay and Green Bay.
“It’s become a little bit of a foodie destination here,” Brown said.
Brown said he also was attracted to the Peninsula by the number of farms from which he could get ingredients that don’t need to come from Italy, such as beef from Waseda Farms and produce from Hidden Acres Farm. The idea of using fresh ingredients, locally sourced when possible, combined with his authentic Italian recipes is what he looks forward to bringing to those seeking a new Door County dining experience.
“That’s going to be the DNA of Della Porta,” Brown said. “Simple, honest, locally sourced food.”
FYI
Della Porta Trattoria e Pizzeria Napoletana is at 12029 State 42, Ellison Bay. It is open from 5 to 9 p.m. Fridays through Tuesdays. Reservations are recommended. For reservations, current menus and more information, visit dellaportadc.com.
Contact Christopher Clough at 920-562-8900 or cclough@doorcountyadvocate.com.
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