Video | World champion pizza acrobat Pasqualino Barbasso shares his skills and creates a char siu Hong Kong special
Two-time world champion Pasqualino Barbasso grew up making pizza in his family’s restaurant. He branched out into pizza acrobatics and now travels the world sharing his art and making delicious pizzas. Catch him at Cucina in the Marco Polo Hongkong Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui
The pizza dough spins smoothly over the top of pizzaiolo Pasqualino Barbasso’s guiding hands; first he twirls it in front of his face, then sends it into the air only to catch it and send it in a different direction, seemingly defying gravity. As he works the dough, it pulls and stretches. Before long the base is now a metre in diameter, spinning over his head.
Watching him in the kitchen, it’s not hard to see why the 44-year-old chef has been crowned the world champion of pizza acrobatics – not once but twice. He’s a master at manipulating the pizza base.
Barbasso makes it look easy – he whips it around his body, under his legs, throwing it in the air and stretching it to monstrous lengths – but I can promise you it’s not.
Giving it a go alongside the master, my dough does one spin and bundles itself in a sad, limp mess around my hands.
Pizza making is in Barbasso’s blood. Starting his pizzaiolo career at 17, the Sicilian says he was practically “born” in his family’s pizzeria, the 40-year-old Falco Azzurro in Cammarata, where he still works when he’s not travelling the world with his acrobatic act.
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In his 20s he started entertaining guests with his dough antics. “I was a normal pizza maker, then after a few years I felt the need to improve my professional skills, so I started to play and I became a little crazy,” he says.