By David Nelson

Pizzeria Bruno
4207 Park Blvd.
260-1311; pizzeriabrunosd.com
Closed all day Monday; lunch served Friday-Sunday only
Oh, authenticity! It’s something we all love, except when it clashes with our expectations.
Collar your nearest Italian buddy and demand his take on Pizzeria Bruno, the napoletana (Naples-style) house of pies on Park Blvd. near El Cajon Blvd. A survey of my own Italian acquaintances—by which I mean actual citizens of Italy who live in San Diego—received the unanimous verdict that Bruno serves the most authentic pizza in town.

“It tastes just like pizza does at home,” says a pal from Lombardy who runs a small café downtown. “The first time I went to Bruno, I closed my eyes when I took my first bite and suddenly I was back with my family in Italy, eating pizza and drinking wine.”

And here’s the rub: Bruno’s pizza sails through the authenticity test, but there are differences between the genuine article and pizza as many Americans have been educated, usually for the worse, to understand it. A real Neapolitan pie, which is the kind served at Bruno, has a high, wide rim darkened by the oven’s diabolical heat. Italians call this the frame and generally trim it away. Yet as hot as the flames that roar inside the oven may be, the center of the pie usually is rather soft and moist, an effect not always beloved by those unaccustomed to this condition. The key difference is that Americans usually expect a wild exuberance of toppings; in the most extreme example, Chicago stuffed deep-dish pizza approximates a genuine pie. Italians take a more restrained approach, adding decorations with an eye to beauty as well as flavor, and taking care that the crust itself is given savory prominence. (They do the same with pasta, which always surprises traveling Yanks accustomed to broad platters of spaghetti afloat in meaty tomato sauce. It’s an old tradition that goes back to the pulmentum, or gruel, that sustained Roman troops, and gradually evolved into the polenta we know today.)

Dark tiles spell out “BRUNO” on the beehive-shaped pizza oven behind the counter in the cozy dining room, and certainly focuses attention, especially when the table eagerly awaits the arrival of specialties like the Bufalina, made with deluxe buffalo milk mozzarella, and the Diavolo (“devil”), so named because the toppings include both pepperoni and a novelty called “goat peppers.” We asked to sample the latter and General Manager Xavier Martinez obligingly brought a dish of the sliced, red-as-the-flames-of-Hades peppers, glistening with olive oil, a little waxy in texture, and pleasantly piquant rather than ragingly hot.

Bruno’s pizzas are wonderfully authentic, served hot, handsome and appetizing from the nearby oven (the trip is short), cut in wedges ready to be pulled apart by guests in a hurry to do just that. Martinez recommends the Margherita ($12), dressed simply with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil, all drizzled with olive oil. It’s elegant and colorful, and the most typically Neapolitan of pizzas; in fact, were some arcane law to specify how pizza must be built, the Margherita would be the answer. Aficionados demanding an especially pure taste would choose the Bufalina ($16), since it excludes tomato sauce and thus emphasizes the ivory cheese (creamy and glamorous) dotted with ruby-red cherry tomatoes and emerald leaves of basil. The play of colors entices (as does the Margherita, they honor Italy’s tri-colored flag), and the elegant flavors, seasoned with extra-virgin olive oil, are quietly rewarding. They don’t set off fireworks, a task relegated to such pies as the already mentioned Diavolo ($15), which is pungent with garlic, and the delicious Campania ($16), layered with tomato sauce, mozzarella, thick slices of fennel-seasoned sausage, chic Cremini mushrooms and roasted onions. It’s relatively complicated compared to most creations composed by Bruno’s master pizza baker, and a party of three put it away in a hurry. At it’s simplest, dough is baked under marinara sauce, sprinklings of fresh oregano and basil, and olive oil–no cheese, grazie ($9). The un-sauced Brunoverde (“green Bruno;” $14) uses a trio of cheeses–mozzarella, top-grade Parmigiano—Reggiano amd ricotta—as a suave background for plantings of peppery arugula. Other choices similarly emphasize just a few important flavors, such as the salami ($15), highlighted with spicy soppresatta sausage and sharp Gaeta olives.

Although many San Diegans would disagree, man does not live by pizza alone, a fact acknowledged by Bruno’s starters and desserts. For a group of three or four, nothing beats the plush antipasto salad ($12), which surrounds chopped romaine with white beans, cubed cheeses, olives, slivered red onions and pickled peppers and adds a topping of rolled, sliced cold cuts. It prepares your mood for pizza, and provides some pizzazz you won’t get from the more demure pies. The simpler Market salad ($8) boasts attractions like mixed nuts and shaved Parmigiano, and for a fine version of caprese, Bruno layers hand-made mozzarella with sliced tomatoes, torn basil and rivulets of olive oil ($9). It’s nice as can be. For dessert (both cost $6), the house-made cannoli are huge, generously stuffed with a Martinez’ own swanky blend of ricotta and mascarpone, and dipped at alternate ends in chocolate chips and pistachios. The panna cotta, or “cooked cream,” is the Italian rival to crème brulee, firmer and somewhat less rich, very pleasant on the tongue, and improved by the addition of huge, juicy blackberries.

Simple artworks and black-and-white photographs, including a riveting shot of a young Sophia Loren, provide sufficient decoration for Bruno, which bustles at prime time. The service is prompt and pleasant but the mood is unhurried—which makes Bruno as authentically Napoletano as the pizzas.