Imagine a boy from New York, son of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, who moves to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and sells pizzas baked from a very Italian Fiat Uno, transformed into a traveling oven. It is the very true story of Shei Shiroma, now 38 years old who in 2011, at the age of 25, left his well-paid advertising job in the Big Apple and left for South America, in search of a new life. A burnout ante litteram, when it hadn't yet become a trend like it is now. Having improvised as a street pizza chef in Rio de Janeiro, he assembled an oven inside his Fiat Uno, with the sole help of YouTube tutorials.
He made himself known on social media, where he would occasionally warn users about the location of the wonderful city where he would go that day: so over time his pizza street has gained success and customers have increased, until in 2014 he opened a real pizzeria, Ferro e Farinha, which today has almost one hundred thousand followers and was included this year in the list of 100 Best Pizzerias in the World by Top Pizza, first overall in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Ferro e Farinha, which uses a wood-fired oven and no longer the metal tool devised by Shiroma (but which is remembered in the name, “ferro”), ranked 89th and was one of five Brazilian pizzerias awarded, in a ranking dominated by Italy with 41 locations, followed by the United States with 15.
The secret of success was simply, as always, quality: although initially improvised and with few means, the Japanese-American pizza chef was inspired by Mr. Domenico, an Italian he had met in his childhood who he wanted to pay homage to by giving his name to the Margherita pizza he sold. Then Shiroma put in his imagination and courage, also drawing on his Asian origins which allowed him, for example, to offer a pizza with cauliflower, shoyu and ginger. The beginning, however, was difficult: the first Ferro e Farinha location, which today is a well-established chain of five restaurants that sells gourmet pizzas at a price equivalent to 15 euros, was a small 20 square meter shop that struggled to fill up with customers.
But one day the local press noticed this “samurai who danced with dough” (as he was called) and Shiroma attracted the attention of famous Brazilian chefs who believed and invested in him, such as Rafa Costa e Silva, owner of the restaurant Lasai from Rio de Janeiro, two Michelin stars and seventh best restaurant in Latin America according to The World's 50 Best Restaurants. In Brazil, Shiroma has become a star of gastronomy but has not forgotten his origins: New York, the city where he was born and which he left to change his life. The pizza chef of Asian origin but with a Carioca accent wanted to pay homage to the City by giving its name to a pizza, which is no coincidence today the favorite of customers: it is made with two different tomato sauces and with mozzarella that goes through a long maturation process.
