Chef Manny Augello

More than once, Chef Manny Augello tried to change the course of a pre-determined life. In school, the Sicilian-born descendant of chefs and farmers chose to study criminal justice. But he ended up in a restaurant kitchen anyway. When his brick-and-mortar, Bread & Circus Provisions, debuted to a hungry Lafayette in 2014, popular dishes included ramen, charcuterie, and hearty burgers. But as luck—no, fate—would have it, Augello secured a wood-fired pizza oven (“Big Bad Ben”) from Naples this spring and has made sizable room on the menu for the traditional Neapolitan pizza that sends the chef firmly, gleefully back to his childhood and the heritage that won’t leave him alone. What does his family think of the switch? Augello laughed as he recalled, "They said, 'It's about damn time.'"

I sat down with Augello recently over slices of margherita to talk about the rules of pizza, the similarities between Cajun and Sicilian culture, and Lafayette’s buoyant food scene. Find excerpts below.

On his childhood in restaurants

I was born in Sicily, and my folks moved here in the ‘nineties when I was nine years old. I grew up in restaurants. My dad’s always had a restaurant. On my mother’s side, it’s more of the farmers, winemakers, cheesemakers, and also restaurateurs. Almost like a perfect breeding ground for someone that was interested in the industry. But I ended up in Natchitoches at Northwestern [State University] for criminal justice. I think there comes a time when everyone wants to run away from what is given to them. The last thing I wanted to do—for a very, very brief period of time—was cook. But I quickly realized that that was just a cruel joke that I was trying to play on myself.

On the growth of Bread & Circus Provisions

We started the Bread & Circus restaurant not quite knowing which direction we wanted to go. But slowly we plugged in little bits and pieces of my Sicilian heritage. The more we plugged in, the more people responded to it. About eight months ago, we decided to launch a Kickstarter to bring in this wood-fired oven from Naples, therefore completing this vision of the food I grew up with—the Neapolitan pizza and the Sicilian street foods. And a very uber-seasonal menu where everything is made in-house. If it’s not made in house, then we go straight to the best source.

On righting the wrongs of local pizza

You pick up any crust here and it’s either flaky or heavy or it falls apart in your hands and it’s greasy. That’s not what pizza is. The dough is a vehicle for extremely simple, well-done, well-grown, well-sourced ingredients. You don’t want to mask any of that magic balance between sauce and dough and cheese at any point. Neapolitan pizza gives you the best platform to do that. You’re working with super-high heat that treats the dough in a unique way, where it uses the moisture left within the dough to almost steam it at a very high temperature. And the toppings are made with a very minimalist approach. Our tomato sauce is hand-crushed, only salt and olive oil added to it. Our herbs are fresh, brought in almost every day. Our cheese is made in house. It’s a level of craftsmanship above everything else I’ve been exposed to thus far.

The last thing I wanted to do—for a very, very brief period of time—was cook. But I quickly realized that that was just a cruel joke that I was trying to play on myself.

On the science behind Neapolitan pizza

The animal—the beast that is Neapolitan dough and how to treat it and make it what it is—requires a very intimate level of senses connected to it—to know when it’s too dry and needs more moisture added, when it needs less moisture, when it needs higher temperatures before you bake it, how long to let it sit out, and the importance of getting the ingredients straight from the source: Naples. We fly in our “00” flour; that’s imported from Naples. That one ingredient is so instrumental to the whole outcome of the dough itself. It provides a level of gluten that is necessary. Gluten provides elasticity. It provides the chew and the mouth feel and also the char, which you couldn’t get with any other flour.

The science behind the Neapolitan dough itself is, again, simple. It’s something that’s primitive and yet very complex. The four ingredients are just salt, water, yeast, and flour; but to treat it from when you have these four ingredients separately to what it is on the plate takes roughly about thirty hours. We allow the dough to bloom for thirty hours; we control the temperature, control the humidity, control how those four ingredients are kept before we mix it into the dough. We let the water sit and distill and work its impurities out. It’s very much as if we were back in Naples and following the same rules of Neapolitan pizza.

I always laugh to myself when people just have a wood-fired oven and they call it Neapolitan pizza. But they just throw whatever the hell they want to inside the oven. That’s not how it works. You have to be committed to the science behind it. It’s not just wood and fire and high temperature.

On Cajun and Sicilian cultures

We are both cursed and blessed with the element of having extremely short, momentary seasons for these couple of things that we see just for small spurts of time throughout the year. The challenge is to take advantage of those small little spurts, those little windows of opportunity, and make the most of it by implementing the cocina povera—which is “the poor kitchen”—which any oppressed society, whether consciously or subconsciously, applies to their food. You take what is here now, and you try to make it last for as long as possible.

Then there’s everything from how the language is spoken—which is the Cajun-French dialect, and the Sicilians have their Sicilian dialect—and how we incorporate religion into everyday life and how we look at food as a way of gathering instead of just a way of survival. How we like to celebrate over both wine and food and bring that community together. Those things, they parallel perfectly off what I remember as a child and what I’ve grown up with here.

On the Lafayette food community

The culture here in Lafayette is very much hungry for what is new and what is—I don’t want to use the word “trendy”—but I’ll tell you this: the mentality is if it can be done in New York City, why can’t it be done in Lafayette?

That gives you—as anybody from any culture—a wonderful foundation to incorporate what you have grown up with and at the same time be successful with it because people are receptive to that element of change and what is different.

On getting back to his roots

One of the best compliments I’ve received throughout this three-year process has been from my mother. She’ll taste something we make here and she’ll say it tastes exactly like what her father used to make. That, to me, says we’re on the right path.

bandcprovisions.com or facebook.com/BreadandCircusProvisions