Urban Discoveries: Disco Volante

This is part of the “Urban Discoveries” series, in which we seek and discover exciting and well-designed places to eat and drink around Europe, especially in Vienna. The article we present today was written by my colleague and friend, Maximilian Martsch, a researcher who works on food history. The pictures were shot by myself. Due to the longer text this time, we decided to change the format a bit; the images are now included within the article and not placed at the end. Thanks to Disco Volante for the invitation and especially to Verena Piontek for the warm welcome and the interview.

I still remember my visit to the famous Antica Pizzaria Da Michele in Naples and the sensational joy of enjoying a purist pizza Margarita. The Soft, moist dough and fluffy crust, the rich marinara sauce topped with tasty slices of mozzarella cheese, and perfectly balanced with a couple of fresh basil leaves. And it’s not only the food but also the bustling and lively atmosphere. After all, pizza is a fast dish; you get in, sit, order, eat, maybe round it up with a coffee, and leave again. In many ways, it encapsulates the Italian lifestyle in a nutshell.
So, to get that authentic experience of Neapolitan pizza, you have to hop on a train or plane and travel down there, right?

Well, not necessarily…right in the middle of Vienna’s trendy 6th district in the busy Gumpendorfer Straße, you can get a taste of Naples’s most iconic dish. The Pizzeria Disco Volante is dedicated to dishing out flat pies topped with all kinds of fresh ingredients right from their steaming hot wood-fired oven. Not only is the pizza inspired by its Neapolitan models, but also the restaurant’s design.

The name Disco Volante is Italian and means “flying disc,” which refers to the pizza’s flat shape and how the dough is thrown in the air to stretch it out before it’s garnished and baked in the oven. But besides this rather obvious correlation, the name also hints at the actual eye candy of the restaurant: the wood-fired oven in the design of a disco ball. We visited during the daytime, and the sunlight’s reflection in the disco ball’s small mirrors created a distinctive atmosphere. However, colored spotlights and Italian disco music also make visiting during the evening worthwhile.

The design concept can be best described as pure and clean. The restaurant immediately reminds me of the unique style of Italy in the 60s; everything looks bright, clean, and minimalistic.
The owners work with regional producers to ensure the best quality, but you also find imports on their menu, like an assortment of delicious Italian lemonades.

The restaurant opened its doors in 2013, and you might have heard of its sister location, “Pizza Mari,” in the 2nd district, which is well known among urban pizza lovers. Both restaurants are owned by Maria Fuchs, who fell in love with Naples and its pizza culture while spending an exchange semester there and decided to bring this experience back to Vienna.

All the pizza cooks at Disco Volante are Italians, and they must go through special training before mastering the art of pizza making, which is really a form of art. The wood-fired oven reaches a temperature of 300–400° and is big enough for eight pizzas baking simultaneously. Due to the high temperature, the pizzas can get burned quickly and must be rotated repeatedly until finished after a couple of minutes. The work requires a crafty technique and a lot of practice. The cooks at Disco Volante know precisely what they are doing, and it’s a joy to watch them scurry around the kitchen while cracking jokes in Italian.

Disco Volante doesn’t do home delivery, so you best pick up the phone and order for pick up, or you just put on your sneakers and run over there to get your hands on their delicious pizza and indulge in the busy atmosphere of southern Italy.

For opening hours and further info, please visit http://www.disco-volante.at