Historical records state that the history of pizza began when ancient Italian citizens started to eat flatbreads with all kinds of toppings. The persecutor of this first idea of pizza was the Focaccia, or panis focacius in Roman, given that it was a roman dish. Now a days pizza has started to evolve, and we have seen a more industrialized version of this as the fast food business began to develop and the pizza joined this development too. Some may argue that the traditional way of making pizza is the best, while other believe the newer version has clearly been an improvement from its persecutor.

Italian style restaurant La Serenisima Venezia located in the Colombian city of Medellin has demonstrated how the perfect combination between older and newer pizza styles can be joined together to form the best pizza a person may eat. Colombian chef Juan Manuel Barrientos, winner of various prices and head chef of another astonishing restaurant called El CIelo located just in from of this pizza place, open this restaurant in 2014 in order to provide the public about his idea of how pizza should be made.

La Serenisima is located in a tourist neighborhood of Medellin called “la 10” or “zona rosa”, therefore you will find many restaurant here and there is high traffic. Given that there many shops and eating places, so there are few parking places and many cars in need of them. I would recommend going in taxi or Uber if possible to avoid searching for a parking lot for a long time, and probably having to walk a few block. The location is one of the few aspects which I did not enjoy from my experience of visiting the restaurant and I would give it 2 out of 5 stars in terms of its location.

Although arriving to the restaurant was not as pleasant as I hoped as soon as I saw the decoration of that place, I realized the long and annoying traffic was worth waiting. The decoration of this restaurant has been planned to make the customer feel as if he was in the Italian city of Venezia, in one of those pizza places. The table are made from a yellowish wood with traditional forms and decoration. The walls are bumpy and painted yellowish to symbolise italian architecture. There’s even a wall in which a fence has been installed for that lover who visit the place, to place a lock on there in representation of their love, just as thousands of tourist do in hundreds of bridges found in Venezia. Even the music played in the background is carefully selected to make the customer feel as if he had been teletransported all the way back to Italy.

The ambience and decoration of the restaurant made me feel as if I was in a traditional italian pizza restaurant  called Al Vecio Canton that I visited when I went to the city of Venezia itself. The tables used, the Italian style decoration, the music, and even the uniforms worn by the waiters in La Serenisima made me feel as if I was back at Al Vecio for a second time. Both experiences have been amazing although I still prefer my visit to Al Vecio because of the environment in which the restaurant was at and because of the river that I could hear and see in the canals from my table which made my experience unforgettable.

A good Italian dish is always accompanied by a good glass wine, and this is not the exception for restaurant La Serenisima. Even though we are all the way back in Colombia, the restaurant has managed to provide the customer with great bottles of wine. The wine list has good variation in prices and quantity. Having both national and international produced bottles the list is to be admire, although keeping the Italian concept of the place they offer some sensational Italian wines characterized for being some of the best wines in the world. When comparing the wine list of La Serenisima with Argentinian meat restaurant El Che, their is much more complete and has more variety in both quality and price although both have something in common. Both places provide motivate the clients to accompany their dishes with a wine produced on the region of their cuisine style, in one being Italian food and wines, and in others being Argentinian food and wines which are is also a major world wine producer.

The most important aspect of a restaurant is the quality of the food provided to the costumer. For this restaurant cooking a good pizza is their main objective, on top of everything else. The restaurant has managed to fusion traditional and modern styles of pizza to make the perfect combination. The presentation of the pizza makes it seem as the traditional one given that it is cooked by a burning wood in a brick oven and not an industrialized one. Cooking a pizza in the traditional manner can take lots of time, but in some way the restaurant has managed to reduce the time of preparation of their dishes and make the process much faster and still ensure good quality in their product. This is similar by the proposal international pizza fast food restaurant Domino’s Pizza has because they have a policy (at least in Colombia), in which a high quality product has to delivered to you in less than 30 minutes, or it will be free. Although in the Serenisima they would not avoid changing their comision if for some reason they take long time to prepare the food, they still took the idea of fastening the preparation process to bring the customer his food in less time. In terms of the ingredients used they have found a way to afford a mixture of old and new pizza flavors or toppings offered to the public, which makes it stand out of other pizza places.

Overall I would give this restaurant 4.5 out of 5 start because almost everything provided such as the food, service, decoration, and ambience was excellent with the exception of the location chosen which highly complicates the arrival to such amazing restaurant.