In Liguria, where the land hugs the Italian Riviera like a crescent, where fishing villages and fishing villages jostle for postcard supremacy and the azure sea laps at hordes of tourists’ feet in summer, lies Airole. Nearly. Few holidaymakers get lost in Airole, a small village in the hinterland. 450 people live here, a third of whom have moved here from abroad, such as the German couple Thomas Hartke and Irene Horbrand. The couple, he’s a former stonemason and she’s an ex-fur designer, make the best pizza in town.
It was on vacation, almost 50 years ago, when the two fell in love – in Italy, in Airole. They kept coming back to the place over and over again until they just stayed. In the meantime, the couple has made a name for themselves locally, first as bar operators, now as pizza bakers. As a pizza baker, of all things, when pizza is such an untouchable, sacred food in Italy, as Hartke tells “CNN Travel”. The biggest challenge was therefore to get a pizza that the locals would accept. But they were never afraid to try.
It was Irene Horbrand who took on the task. She took a crash course in pizza-making from a Neapolitan in Germany, rolled up her sleeves and got started. With success. On the opening day, guests confirmed that she was making “real Italian pizza, thin and crispy,” she says. “Pizza is amore. We eat with our eyes first, then with our mouths.”
There are just ten tables for 50 guests at A Teira. The pizzas are exclusively baked by Irene Horbrand, up to 60 pieces in the evening, her husband takes care of the service. In the warm months, the restaurant is usually fully booked, and locals are also among the guests. A miracle actually. Because the Italians are unique with their pizzas and Horbrand’s toppings are sometimes more reminiscent of Oktoberfest than of Dolce Vita. So the Munich native insists on giving her baked goods a Bavarian twist – with sauerkraut, veal knuckle and sausages.
The mid-sixties baked their way up to the local pizza bakers Numero uno with their German-Italian pizzas. They don’t have much competition in Airole. There are only two other restaurants in town, only one also serves pizza – but only in the summer months and to take away.
