Restaurants
Alba Sourdough Pizza Zurich's original sourdough pizza
© Jonathan Labusch
The crispy, bulging crust impresses with its dark grain and is topped with everything that tastes good. Pizza always works! Especially when the dough is as delicious as in Zurich's first sourdough pizzeria, Alba, in District 3. However, if you expect classic Italian feel-good cuisine in this pretty pastel dream, you're looking in vain, as creative pizza variations are served here.
The stylish and tasteful interior already indicates that Alba Sourdough Pizza is a modern place. You can savour one of the excellent drinks at terrazzo tables and benches or, even cooler, at the steel grid table. A visit is particularly worthwhile for the tasty Negroni Twists. When the weather is nice, it's best to sit by the large open window front with a group of friends and let the booming house beats get you in the mood for the evening.
The star of the evening is, of course, the pizzas. Meagan Cederbaum and Simon Bernhard use no yeast at all for the dough. Instead, the homemade sourdough is given plenty of time - 48 hours - before it is placed in the domes at 410 degrees for 80 to 90 seconds. This makes the dough light and easy to digest, just like in Naples.
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However, the menu is less traditional. To start, you can share Gianni's stracciatella with salted tomatoes and Szechuan oil or a hand-cut Alba Tatare with nut butter mayo and pickled egg yolk. Italian-inspired but with a modern, fresh twist. And the pizza? This is also inspired by different cultures.
It can be topped with plenty of greenery: the "Eat your greens" pizza combines parsley, dill, lemon zest on ricotta, and Swiss raw milk mozzarella. Or with a subtle vanilla béchamel, green asparagus and an orange vinaigrette. Equally tasty and particularly popular is the Turkish-inspired lahmacun, garnished with cauliflower mince, sumac spice, tomatoes and a lemon wedge, mint mayonnaise, pickled onions and parsley.
Those who prefer a less experimental approach will also find classic pizza variations such as marinara, margherita and diavola on the menu - as a way of bridging the gap and breaking down fears of contact, so to speak - but a little courage is rewarded with great pleasure at Alba.
At the latest, when you treat yourself to a buffalo milk ice cream with olive oil and lemon crumble as the crowning glory. In any case, the unusual pizzas are very popular in Zurich - getting a table spontaneously at Alba Sourdough Pizza is unlikely, if not impossible.
