PORT CHARLOTTE — Vito Recchia, owner/pizzaiolo of Port Charlotte’s 23-year-old Bella Napoli Pizzeria & Restaurant, took a stowaway along on a recent trans-Atlantic flight.
The ingredient he counted on most in the International Nordic Pizza Champion Cup in Gothenburg, Sweden, was his imported Italian flour, so he brought it with him.
It paid its way in first-place gold in the Gourmet Pan Pizza category.
THE ROAD TO GOTHENBURG
As a globetrotting member and Culinary Coach of the U.S. Pizza Team, Recchia was no stranger to international pizza competitions.
When he started making Roman street-food-style pizza in Port Charlotte, at his Taglio Cucina & Pizzeria Romana and at Bella Napoli, customers went wild for the slices topped with voluptuous variety.
After years thinking outside the local pizza box, Recchia soon came to embrace travel, conferences, competition and education as validation of his craft.
In 2022, after the pandemic had toppled Taglio, he began competing solo at the Galbani Professionals Pizza Cup in Orlando, where he caught the eye of the U.S. Pizza Team.
In April 2023, as the new guy on the team, he took second place in the world for Roman Pan Pizza at the annual World Pizza Championship in Parma, Italy. His “Heart of Parma” was the very pie he’d spent years perfecting and introducing to local diners.
The following year, he started judging competitions in California and at the Pizza Tomorrow Summit in Orlando, where he demoed how to make his specialty Roman pizza.
“After I presented and cut the slices for the judges,” Vito Recchia said, “Michelin-star chefs came over and asked for more.”
In 2025, chosen as a master by Molino Signatti flour and Grandi Forni Italiani ovens, he became the first American to conduct New York/New Haven-style pizza masterclasses at SIGEP World, a gargantuan international food service convention in Rimini, Italy.
TAKING PIZZA TO SWEDEN
In April of this year, Recchia signed up for Sweden’s International Nordic Cup, which invited some 50 competitors from around the world. Like much of Scandinavian cuisine, Recchia said, the competition focuses on the elite. Two of his judges hold Michelin stars.
“I never in my life thought pizza would take me to Sweden,” said Recchia. “Most of the world focuses on Neapolitan-style, wood-fired pizza, but in Sweden they’re starting to want more variety in pizza. I was the only one in my category to do Roman pan pizza.”
Wherever Recchia competes, he also showcases local products. In Parma, that meant four kinds of mushrooms, stracciatella and 30-month-aged Parmigiano Reggiano.
Everything in Sweden proved more challenging.
“I pre-fermented my dough in the hotel room. But the room temperature wasn’t quite right, so I had to hit the ice machine and do coil folds for five hours. And the mixer wasn’t the right kind.
“I had to use every dough- and pizza-making technique I’d ever learned.”
Then he had to somehow scare up everything else that he needed to make a pizza using Scandinavian products, from basics like yeast, salt, oil, sugar, apple cider vinegar and potatoes to Norwegian langoustines and lingonberries.
Topped with potato cream, crème fraîche, butter-poached langoustines, chanterelle mushrooms, sweet-tart lingonberry gastrique and smoked sea salt, the prizewinning “Teglia (Pan) with Magic” wouldn’t find many takers in Port Charlotte.
It bristled with a decorative garnish of langoustine shells, their claws a-dangle, eyes bugging, that only a Swedish judge could love.
Vito Recchia brandishes his gold trophy for Gourmet Pan Pizza at the International Nordic Pizza Champion Cup in Gothenburg, Sweden.
PHOTOS PROVIDED BY VITANGELO RECCHIA
“After the judging, they came over and sucked the meat out of the heads,” Recchia said.
Sweden might be ranked as the world’s happiest country, but right now, Vito Recchia is probably the world’s happiest pizza guy.
Bella Napoli Pizzeria & Restaurant ($$), 941-764-8000, 1938 Kings Highway, Port Charlotte, is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, noon to 9 p.m. Sunday.