- Romans are obsessive about food.
And recently, locals in this Italian city
are really digging the trapizzino, a new food
that's essentially a pizza pocket sandwich
stuffed with classic Roman dishes.
Chef Stefano Callegari, who originally gained
fame and reputation for making pizza,
created the trapizzino in 2008.
Now, with its success, he has opened the first
US location here in New York City.
(upbeat music)
Tell me about trapizzino.
What is this?
- It's ...
A corner of plain pizza.
The crust is so crunchy,
but the dough is very, very soft.
- Why make it into a triangle like that?
- Because I had the problem
that I couldn't eat all of these wonderful
recipes that I'm fond of.
- These classic Roman recipes, right?
- Inside the pizza, because I was dropping everything.
So I was thinking, how can I do?
What shall I do?
This shape can hold all the juice for you.
- [Serena] Oh, a pizza pocket.
- [Stefano] Yeah, it's a pizza pocket.
Oxtail, it's one thousand years we cook it
in that way.
That's very ...
Powerful. And we were so--
- People were eating it in ancient Rome.
- Yes.
- [Serena] And now we're eating this same dish, now.
- Yes, and it takes something like
at least six hours to be cooked,
because it's a very hard part of the cow, the beef.
- I mean, yeah, it's literally the tail.
- Yes! A muscle, you know? - [Serena] Yeah.
- [Stefano] So you have to cook long and gently.
- [Serena] So this is the tongue one.
- [Stefano] Yes.
- [Serena] So this is another one
of the classic Roman dishes, or?
- [Stefano] Yes, this is classic Roman,
in Rome it's very popular, eating this other part of food.
Tripe, tongue, tail.
- Using every part of the animal.
- Yes, yes, yes.
- The bread part is really nice.
- [Stefano] Yeah, thanks.
- The sauce is really bright and fresh and ...
This is good, it's very tender.
(upbeat music)
- So I am here to try the three different
kinds of trapizzino.
They said that they are a combination
of the most popular items, classic Roman dishes
stuffed into the pizza bianca.
They're basically pizza pocket sandwiches,
so we have the oxtail one, the eggplant parm,
and a chicken cacciatore,
which is one of the most popular ones.
We'll go with the chicken first.
(upbeat music)
Mmm.
It's a chicken cooked with rosemary,
and the rosemary is really packed in there.
Really huge bursts of rosemary.
The chicken's super tender and soft,
and the bread is crunchy on the outside
and soft on the inside.
But it's interesting.
Eggplant parm.
Very nice and cheesy.
It tastes like a classic eggplant parm.
Got that funkiness of the Parmesan cheese,
and then the sweetness of the tomato sauce.
If you really like a bready pizza,
deep-dish pan type thing,
where you have that bounciness within the crust,
that's basically what this outside aspect is.
This is the oxtail.
Braised for many, many hours.
This is chef's favorite one, apparently.
It's a dish with a lot of history in Rome,
so eating this dish,
you really get a taste of Roman culture,
in a really literal sense.
Just like with the chicken dish,
it feels just really homey and hearty, and
a little bit sweet and tart from that tomato,
and the meat is braised really soft.
The texture, it just works.
These dishes take a really long time to make.
It's hours and hours.
And if you go sit down at a restaurant,
because they're so time and labor-intensive,
it's gonna be expensive.
It's six bucks here.
You can try all these different, really classic dishes
from Rome and Italy,
and get kind of a snapshot of Roman culture
within a street food.
So it might be a new food,
and calling it a pizza-sandwich hybrid
might sound like that,
but eating it, it doesn't feel like a gimmick.
This is the first US location,
so they're really hoping that people will
wanna get a taste of Rome here.
I've written about it, but I've never
actually tried the food.
So I enlist the help of my buddy Dale Talde, chef,
but also a huge fan of Jollibean.
- [Dale] When I first came ...