In Budapest — a city more famous for goulash than flatbread — Neverland Pizzeria is taking diners on a culinary trip back 2,000 years. Founder Josep Zara and his team have introduced a limited-edition pizza made exclusively with ingredients that would have been available in ancient Rome — long before tomatoes, mozzarella, or even the word “pizza” existed in Europe.
Zara said the idea came from a simple question: what might something like pizza have tasted like during the Roman Empire? While Romans didn’t eat pizza as we know it today — since tomatoes arrived from the Americas centuries later and mozzarella only emerged much later in Italy — they did consume oven-baked flatbreads topped with herbs, cheese, and sauces. These were often sold in Roman snack bars known as thermopolia and are considered ancestors of modern pizza.
The inspiration deepened in 2023 when archaeologists uncovered a fresco in Pompeii showing a focaccia-like flatbread topped with ingredients resembling pomegranate seeds, dates, spices, and a pesto-style spread. The discovery sparked Zara’s curiosity about how such flavors might have tasted.
To develop the recipe, he researched Roman culinary traditions, consulting a historian and studying the ancient cookbook De re coquinaria, believed to date to around the 5th century. From there, he compiled a list of historically accurate ingredients, deliberately excluding anything that originated in the Americas.
Head chef László Bárdossy explained that recreating a Roman-style dough proved challenging. Since modern pizza dough is largely water and ancient infrastructure lacked running water systems, the team experimented extensively before settling on fermented spinach juice to help the dough rise. They used ancient grains such as einkorn and spelt, resulting in a denser texture than typical contemporary pizzas.
The finished creation features toppings associated with Roman aristocratic cuisine: epityrum (olive paste), garum (a fermented fish sauce common in Roman cooking), confit duck leg, toasted pine nuts, ricotta, and a grape reduction. Bárdossy described it as a modern interpretation designed to be accessible, though he acknowledged it appeals mainly to adventurous diners rather than everyday pizza lovers.
For Zara, the project reflects the restaurant’s balance between innovation and tradition. They enjoy experimenting — but with one modern limit firmly in place: no pineapple.
