Pizza Italy

The restaurant & setting. We're in Želiezovce, a town made famous by the Esterházy family, who brought pizza to this region during their travels through Venice. It's here, to the Pizza Italy pizzeria, that Martin Novák arrives. But this isn't a classic restaurant: it's a delivery operation, one of five the company now runs (there used to be ten). In a small, twenty-square-metre room „two gates" from the pizzeria and the gyros place, the owner wants to build a real restaurant, though for now it's just an unfinished space with four tables.

The people. The owner is Michaela „Miška" Šaturová, 23, who has been in the food business for five years. She worked for her mum from the age of fifteen and always wanted to be the boss. The co-owner is 22-year-old Samuel „Samko", with whom she used to be in a relationship; today they're just business partners on a 50/50 split, and „there's still a little something there". In the kitchen and on the pizzas are the staff: pizza cook Roman and the women on the team (Ingrid, Irenka). Miška has a daughter, openly admits to a debt of 120 thousand, and a weakness for herself: „I've got, for example, breasts, yes, a liposuction, lips. I've got Botox."

Why they called Martin. Business is declining. „At the start we had a lot of work and now it's dropping off a bit," Miška says, fearing she won't even make payroll; she wants her staff to get what they deserve. At the same time she asks something unusual of Martin: to advise her how to turn a delivery operation into a restaurant. Martin corrects this at once: „I came to help with a restaurant. Not so that I build the restaurant for you."

The first visit. Martin orders a pizza and a gyros, and disaster arrives literally: the pizza cook drops it on the floor on the way and serves it anyway. „Served off the floor, that I've never eaten before." The pizza is burnt on the bottom, dried out, the dough crumbly; the lower oven doesn't work at all, the second has a broken thermostat, and the three-phase mixer has been „fixed" for four years with a jammed-in toothpick. The gyros is plain mediocre, „we've eaten one like it a million and five hundred times". Martin sums it up as „tragicomic desperation".

The diagnosis. The root of the problem isn't the kitchen but the leadership. A mixer broken for four years, three pizza ovens (one dead, one with no thermostat), and the owner meanwhile invests in herself and drives an expensive car. „Instead of, say, the jaw[line], the oven could have been repaired." Martin tells her she's not a leader the staff would follow: „What respect do you want from them when it's like this?" Miška breaks: „I failed."

The reset. Martin sets Miška a task: he swaps her role with the employee Roman and makes her grind alone through the rush. In two hours she handles sixty, maybe seventy pizzas on her own and realises what her people do every day: „You learn from your own mistakes, and I really do respect you more now." She gets her first praise, „hats off", and promises to fix the oven and the mixer, „even if I sell a handbag". But when they move on to the restaurant plan, it turns out the space has no hygiene approval and no permit to serve food. „Are we going to do this off the books? People, have you lost your minds?" Martin cuts the visit short: „For today, we're calling it off."

New concept & menu. Some time later Miška calls him back. She's put everything in order, she has a decision dated 3 March 2025, hygiene clearance, all the permits. She sold her car to pay her people and refurbished the adjoining room (working through the nights, „at 5 a.m. everyone came in"). Samko meanwhile left to work abroad. Martin returns and adds a concept that suits delivery: baked cannelloni in aluminium trays, two stuffed focaccias, profiteroles, and above all pizza fritta, Neapolitan fried street-food dough. „The most important dish I've prepared for Pizza Italy is pizza fritta." Friends from gastrokuchyne.sk bring equipment, and TSK donates vouchers worth 2000 euros. „I'm in complete shock, because I didn't expect this."

The big night. The prep is „like a rollercoaster". The team doesn't read the recipes, throws the first batch in the bin, runs out of ricotta, Miška confuses mortadella with „morkadella" and keeps insulting people, until Martin reins her in: „Right now you can't curse, you have to be more motivating." They stall the guests with a free welcome drink, but by some miracle the kitchen gets ready in time: „People can come, and now God help us." In the end people didn't wait long and were satisfied.

One month later. Martin returns for the third time, which rarely happens to him. The restaurant is full, queues wait outside, delivery is humming. The cannelloni are excellent: hot, crisp, juicy. The lasagne („girls, they were great"). The profiteroles (made for the first time ever) and the tiramisu came out well. The weak spots persist: the pizza fritta has too little filling and „tastes like langoš", the focaccia is dried out and dry, „I could play table tennis with this".

Verdict: Martin acknowledges the huge leap from the „garage" to a place where people can finally sit down, work done with heart and a good team, but with reservations about the pizza fritta and the focaccia. The sticker comes: 3 knives. „Sort of the middle… It's more than the middle, girls. It'll only get better." Martin adds that he's returned to Pizza Italy more times than to almost any other restaurant, and that in his view Miška has a goal and knows where she wants to take it.