In Naples, pizza making is an art. Young apprentices will train for years as an oven assistant before even touching any toppings. There are even strict guidelines on which ingredients, down to the flour and tomatoes, can be used to make a vera pizza Napoletana.

Compared to this, pizza standards in Manchester have been pretty low. And that’s not an attack on pizzerias in the city, it’s more of an explanation as to why customers will go back time and time again for a doughy, under-proven cheese-fest.

My point is this: once you have a good pizza, you wont go back.  Anyone who’s been to Altrincham to try the Honest Crust pizza will know what I’m talking about.

The good news for pizza pilgrims is the immanent arrival of Rudy’s Neapolitan Pizza in Ancoats (the area formerly known as Little Italy) next week.  

Jim Morgan and Kate Wilson have been planning and saving for Rudy’s for over five years. “It’s truly independent. There’s no silent investors,” says Kate. “This is all our savings, we’re here painting the walls, pretty much doing everything.”

“Making money is not even four or five on our list of priorities. We’re more interested in making the food right, making the environment right,” adds Jim.

Jim had been making pizza at home for over eight years before working at Honest Crust. And the reason for opening their own restaurant? It’s more than a desire to serve good pizza, it’s a need to.

“I feel like that was the only natural progression – to open a pizzeria – honestly,” says Jim. “Because I’m so obsessed with doing it every day, the only way to remedy that is to do it as a job.”

Do you really think you’re obsessed with pizza?

Jim - “Yeah.”

“I can vouch for that,” adds Kate.

“It’s a bit of a problem,” admits Jim. “If I’m on my laptop, all I’ll be doing is reading about pizza. I actually wake up thinking about pizza. Basically you’ll see my mind wander – it’s probably happened two or three times already – and I'll be thinking about pizza.”

“There’s just too much to talk about. Every process, there’s different ways of mixing the dough, different ways of resting the dough, types of fermentation, there’s endless points that send you crazy but also make it interesting.”

One of the biggest challenges for Jim and Kate has been sourcing the right ingredients.

“We’re looking for a very strong 00 flour. Most people use a Caputo flour which is a mill in Naples. San Marzano tomato, which is incredibly sweet. And nothing else to it as well, just tomato–just mill it with a bit of salt and that’s it. And then a cows milk mozzarella.”

 “We’ve got four or five different cheeses that we’re going to run some more tests on. I think its got to be very white – that’s what Neapolitans say. You’ll see a lot of yellow cheese on pizzas, which basically means it’s bad cheese, its gone bad. You shouldn’t have yellow mozzarella.”

“It also needs to have the right melting point – so if you’re putting it in at a certain temperature, you don’t want it to melt too fast.”

“We’ve almost got it, but we just need to do it in our oven here, to make sure we’ve got the exact…. cheese.” Jim adds, laughing. “Jesus, I just went off on one about cheese then.”

“It’s actually really, really simple, but you have to wade through allot of crap to get to the actual simple stuff. Like, mozzarella is a simple thing. Places that make it traditionally will do it well and it will be a simple thing. But it’s the stuff you get from factories which isn’t good – and that’s what our suppliers are trying to send us. I’m looking at it like – this is bad cheese… it’s made in Germany and it’s yellow – I don’t want this. You just have to get through all that.”

Thankfully for customers, it’s not just the style of pizzas that Jim and Kate are inspired by, it’s the price tag as well.

“We’ve been to some amazing pizza places, but it’s the size of the pizza, and how affordable it is. And that’s something we’d like to model ourselves on as well, that actually we don’t need to charge 15 quid, it should be affordable and available to everyone,” Kate explains. 

“I hope it’s the kind of place people will feel comfortable to come on their own, or with friends for a drink. We’ve always been focused on the community part of Ancoats. Nobody goes to the pub on their own anymore, and I hope that people will feel they can do that here.  We’ve got some amazing beers from Blackjack and Runaway. We just want people to feel incredibly welcome.”

“I’m also really excited to be a part of the regeneration of Ancoats, this is such a unique opportunity for us to give this area a boost,” adds Kate.

The area, previously known as Little Italy, is due for a boost with the string of independents opening over the next couple of months.

Perhaps Rudy’s Neapolitan Pizza will bring a little bit of Italy back to Little Italy.