Forty-eight hours
Our dough rests two full days at cellar temperature. The flavour becomes lighter, the crust deeper, the digestion easier. Time is the first ingredient we never skip.
Naturally leavened over forty-eight hours, baked under live oak embers, finished with what the market gave us this morning. Nothing else, nothing more.
Maison Celano was opened by a small team who believe a pizzeria is, at heart, a place of patience. Long fermentation, real fire, ingredients we can name out loud. The rest is hospitality.
Our dough rests two full days at cellar temperature. The flavour becomes lighter, the crust deeper, the digestion easier. Time is the first ingredient we never skip.
We bake on a bed of glowing oak embers, ninety seconds at most. The base hisses, the cornicione blooms, the cheese barely melts. That is exactly the point.
We change the menu when the season changes, which is to say often. Some pizzas stay all year. Others arrive for three weeks and disappear. We will tell you which is which.
Pizzeria
"You do not cook a pizza in this oven. You give it back to the fire and ask the fire to be gentle."
The rest of the menu is on the chalkboard, and it moves with the seasons. These three remain. They are how we taste the dough, the fire and the day's tomatoes against themselves.
San Marzano tomato, fior di latte, basil picked an hour before service, a thread of olive oil. The recipe of the south, served the way we wish it always was.
No tomato. Stracciatella whipped on order, a slow-cooked vegetable from the morning market, cured ham laid on after the oven, lemon zest, black pepper.
Tomato, garlic confit, oregano, salted anchovy, capers in salt, a drizzle of green oil. No cheese. The pizza for those who want to taste the sauce and the fire and very little else.
Maison Celano was opened with the belief that a pizzeria can be a quiet place. A long table at the front, four short ones at the back, the oven visible from every seat. A small chalkboard. A short list of wines. No music loud enough to interrupt a conversation.
The dough is made every morning from three Italian flours, blended for elasticity, flavour and a crust that holds its shape. It rests in cold for two days. It is divided and shaped by hand. It is never rolled. It is never rushed.
"The house believes a pizza should taste of the field, the fire and the hour you ate it. Not of a recipe written down somewhere."
A note from the kitchen · Strasbourg
Our menu has four short sections. Read it the way you would a letter. Ask us anything. The chalk gets dusted and rewritten when the season turns, sometimes more often.
Our wine list is short on purpose. Five reds, four whites, two oranges, a few bubbles, all chosen because they like our pizzas and because we know the grower. Ask, and we will pour you a taste before you decide.
Volcanic red, light on the tongue, long on the finish. Pairs with everything tomato-led.
A still white, almond and white flower. The wine for our Bianca and for the long evenings.
Skin-contact, three months on the lees, a touch of grip. The wine for the Marinara, full stop.
Dry, slightly fizzy, cold from the cellar. The Italian apéritif, the way it should be served.
Stirred slowly, served over one large cube of ice, an orange peel pressed onto the rim. To start the evening.
Bitter herbs, a spoon of sugar, a drop of orange. The way to close a meal, and the way to ask for another hour.
We answer every request the same day, almost always within the hour. For tables of six and above, please tell us a little about the occasion so we can prepare the room and the wine properly.
+33766066273
luciecelan@gmail.com
We answer within the hour.