Buongiorno weir-dough!
👋🏻 We are Meagan & Simon: Founders and hospitality management professionals with 20 years of combined experience in hospitality operations. We met during hospitality management school (Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne) and graduated back in 2016. While traveling the world, attending the Pizza World Cup in Naples and being inspired by how pizza is interpreted in different countries, we quickly understood that this popular meal has spread far beyond the Italian border. It is a product that can and deserves to be modified by everyone in their own way.
🤘 We love Italian craftsmanship. In fact, we have Italian & Neapolitan blood running through our veins, but we don’t want to be just another «authentic» Italian pizzeria. There are plenty of those already.
«Alba» (it. sunrise) aims to bring a new light into the old-fashioned world of pizza baking. We are dedicated to redefining authenticity and moving away from traditional conventions of how pizza should be done. We are the place for the ones who inherently appreciate tradition, but do not fear bringing their own twist to the table.
After years of eating pizza the same way, we wanted to bring a fresh take on how to enjoy this universal food. That’s why we decided to create something unique to Zurich’s vibrant gastronomic scene. Alba is a true Zurich’ian restaurant — utilizing Italian craft and adding new flavors with local produce.
🍕 For our toppings and dough, we use techniques and ingredients that are unconventional in the traditional sense, but incredibly mouth-watering when combined. We use sourdough because we prefer the tangy flavor and want to keep things as natural as possible by omitting commercial yeast.
🌱 We firmly believe that you need to know the rules in order to break them. We talked to sourdough bakers across Europe in order to «grow with the dough» (pun intended). We sold pizzas out of our apartment building in Berlin and brought rays of sunshine to our neighbors during the pandemic. We gathered feedback, tried sourdough pizzerias all over europe, launched our product at music festivals, and learned more and more about the mechanics of fermentation that would give our dough its signature sour taste.
🏎 After 2.5 years of deliberate preparation, we (Meagan & Simon) convinced Carmine Giannini to join our team. Carmine, a.k.a. «the Sourdough whisperer,» was born and raised near Naples. He decided to leave rural Italy and move to the UK, eventually ending up in Paris, where he worked in some of the best pizzerias of Europe (BigMamma & Dalmata). Having grown sick and tired of Italian «rules,» Carmine decided to expand his horizons and challenge sacred held conventions.
Seriously dough. You should join the Alba movement if…
🍽️You want to eat pizza that is exceptionally light, easy to digest and has that aromatic-tangy sourdough flavor. We are obsessed with experimentation and will never stop innovating on our dough and toppings for our guests. Our pizzas are served with Italian & Swiss natural wine.
🌱 You believe that the word «authentic» in the traditional sense is limiting for innovation and progress. Is our pizza inauthentic just because we use Swiss Fior-di Latte-Mozzarella?
🫶 You believe that a product like pizza deserves a quality service experience, which is normally reserved only for gastronomic-restaurants. We are passionate about our pies and we intend to serve them with genuine interest to our customers.
🎨 You believe in thoughtfully-designed brands. Alba is curated by Andrina Schmid (ZHDK Alumni) and the illustrations carefully crafted by the famous artist Karla Sutra (Paris), bridging the cheeky-mediterranean flair with a Zurich twist.
🍕 Some of our pizzas:
- Sourdough-Pizza with fermented chili / eggplant / confit garlic and tomato sauce
- Sourdough-Pizza/ Swiss Ricotta/ Dill / white alpine garlic and lemon-zest (also vegan)
- Sourdough-Pizza/ Tomato Pasta D.O.P./ homemade Wiederkli Sausage/ fermented chili/ Zuger Chääshütte-Mozzarella/ Confit Garlic
- Sourdough-Pizza/ Zuger Chääshütte-Mozzarella/ Swiss Miso-Mushrooms/ lightly fried sage/ Truffle-Pecorino
- Margherita (our version of the OG Margherita is served with Swiss Mozza) served as a classic or as a reversed Margherita
🍦One of our Desserts:
- Swiss Buffalo-Milk soft-serve with Olive Oil «Pietra Santa,» salt-flakes and homemade shortbread
This is what we need backing for.
The amount generated through the crowdfunding campaign will be invested in essential kitchen equipment (listed below). Every little bit of extra cash will be thoughtfully invested to create a one of a kind experience within the 4 walls of our pizzeria - opening up a restaurant in Zurich is not for the light-hearted:
👨🏽🍳 Izzo Forno- Oven to bake the perfect sourdough at 480C for that perfect Leopard crust (15’000 CHF).
🍕 Dough Machine- To properly mix the sourdough at scale (4’000 CHF).
❄️ Fridges- To cold-ferment the dough for maximum digestion for 48h (3’000 CHF).
🍦Soft-Serve Machine for our signature Buffalo-Milk soft-serve (2’000 CHF).
🔪 Berkel-Machine to cut our cold-cuts to ensure maximum freshness (2’000 CHF).
🪑 Essential furniture such as our chairs, our tables and our signature Karla-Sutra plates (2’000 CHF)
