Pizza and khachapuri

Restaurateurs have been taking advantage of Muscovites’ love for pizza and all pizza-like things for the past 30 years. In the meantime, Moscow has undergone at least three waves of pizza popularity, starting from American thick-crust pizza with curious toppings (for example, Hawaiian pizza with canned ham and pineapple), moving on to the thinly-rolled out Neapolitan ‘classic,’ and now with the fashion for pinsa and other variations of Roman pizza made from a combination of flours (wheat, soy, rice) with a longer fermentation time. Five restaurants you can boldly visit to try out the right sort of pizza today are Pinzeria by Bontempi, Zotman Pizza, Scrocchiarella, Pizza Maestrello, and Pizza 22 cm.
Moscow loves khachapuri – Georgian pirogi (pies) with cheese, sometimes called Georgian pizza. Adjara-style khachapuri is the most photogenic kind: an open pie in the form of a boat with egg yolk in the center. It is so popular that this basic recipe takes on its own style in various restaurants. Kazbek adds truffles to the cheese and eggs, Megobari and Tsomi remove part of the dough to raise the sides and make them crunchier, and Saperavi makes Adjara-style khachapuri gluten-free.