For Andrea Bongi, pizza has always been a family affair. His return to Pontassieve’s historic Pizzeria Centrale in 2023 brought him back to the eatery where his father, Romano “Rivellino” Bongi, helped shape the town’s pizza culture—and gave him the opportunity to carry that story forward in his own way.
Opened in 1955, Pizzeria Centrale was among Tuscany’s early pizzerias. Romano Bongi took over in 1970 and ran the restaurant through the 1980s, while his son Andrea was growing up around the trade. Andrea began working professionally alongside his father in 1988, at the age of 18, at Chalet Albereta in nearby Pelago. After gaining experience elsewhere and opening his own pizzeria in 2005, he returned to Centrale more than three decades later.
Now, as the restaurant approaches its eighth decade, Andrea is looking both backwards and forwards. His latest project is a tomato pulp made exclusively for Pizzeria Centrale, bringing the restaurant’s supply chain closer to home.
The tomatoes are the Roma variety, grown in nearby Rufina by Azienda Agricola Il Piano before being transformed in Vicchio, in the Mugello, by Azienda Agricola La Fenice. Bongi has followed the process from field to jar, creating a supply chain that remains entirely within Tuscany.
“The tomato is the cornerstone of pizza, which is why I have so many varieties on the menu and choose them carefully,” Bongi explains. “Now I wanted to take it one step further: to work with those who grow it just a few kilometres from here and follow the whole journey, from the field to the jar.”
The new tomato will form the basis of a forthcoming section dedicated to 100 per cent Tuscan pizzas, with every ingredient sourced within the region. The local pulp will be paired with Bufalcioffi fiordilatte made with Tuscan milk and flour from Molino Angeli in Pietrasanta, used for Bongi’s direct dough, which has 65 per cent hydration and leavens for at least 36 hours.
It is a natural extension of the philosophy Andrea has brought to Centrale since taking over in October 2023. His menu already showcases ingredients from across Tuscany, including cured meats Tarese del Valdarno, Bardiccio della Valdisieve and Prosciutto di Grigio del Casentino. During mushroom season, Bongi, a professional forager, also brings porcini from the woods of Casentino and Rufina into the kitchen. On the evening I visit for a press dinner (full disclosure: I regularly pop by for a Margherita Classica or Capricciosa like many Pontassievesi), we devour a Marinara with a delicate garlic lick of Aglione della Valdichiana, the sublime Donato featuring caramelized onions and bardiccio blood sausage from a local butcher, the full-flavoured Beba 99 (fiordilatte, porcini foraged by Andrea and Tarese del Valdarno) designed to pair with a friend’s wine before finishing with La Cosacca grated with pungent Conciato Romano cheese. His career has also taken Bongi well beyond Pontassieve.
His career has also taken him well beyond Pontassieve. In recent months, Bongi has brought his pizza-making skills to the Sanremo Music Festival and Andrea Bocelli’s Teatro del Silenzio, putting a local family tradition on some decidedly bigger stages.
Yet his increasingly Tuscan approach does not mean forsaking the broader Italian heritage of pizza. The current menu travels across the country through its tomatoes and ingredients, from San Marzano dell’Agro Sarnese-Nocerino DOP and Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio DOP to Antichi Pomodori di Napoli and pomodorini from Corbara.
That balance between family tradition and personal vision, local ingredients and Italy’s wider culinary heritage lies at the heart of Bongi’s Pizzeria Centrale.
For Andrea, returning to the restaurant his father once ran is more than a homecoming. It is an opportunity to take something inherited and make it his own: preserving a family connection to pizza, while building a food culture rooted firmly in the place he calls home.
From father to son and from field to pizza, Pizzeria Centrale’s story has come full circle.
