Cox: Vignette like Naples, only better

You have to understand that chef Mark Hopper at Vignette in The Barlow marketplace in Sebastopol is obsessed with making perfect pizza. But not just any pizza. He makes pizza like the best pies in Naples, Italy, replicating their style but improving on their taste.

The obsessive part probably developed from, or at least was exacerbated by, his work as executive chef of casual dining for the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group (The French Laundry, Bouchon, Per Se, etc.). Keller’s intense fixation on detail and perfection is legend.

So to fully appreciate Hopper’s pizzas, you have either fallen in love with the Neapolitan style of tomato pie, or realize that what you will get at Vignette is a classic Napolitano pizza improved in flavor by the quality of the toppings available from the farms and gardens of our incomparable region. You will also be delighted with the chef’s knack for combining flavors in unique and intriguing ways, not just on his pizzas, but with his appetizers, too.

For instance, Today’s Vegetable ($10 ???) appetizer was first-of-the-season parsnips fire-roasted and lightly sauced with a sweet syrup, piled up like logs in a lumber yard and topped with coarsely chopped pears, all flavored with pumpkin pie spices. Imagine the chef thinking, “What if I made an appetizer where every ingredient starts with the letter P?” The flavors worked!

Today’s Salad ($11 ???½) was whole-leaf heart of romaine lettuce with lots of shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, toasted almonds, and a small school of white anchovies - those uncured, sardine-like delicacies called boquerones in Spain. In a mad rush of Mediterranean enthusiasm, the chef drenched it all with excellent olive oil and served it immediately, before the oil could soak into the leaves.

Chef Hopper also made me an appetizer I couldn’t refuse: Peperoni Cruschi ($8 ???). It’s made of dried senise peppers from Basilicata in Italy, a region located in the instep of the boot. These red, pointy peppers have very thin walls, so they dry easily. To make the cruschi (pronounced crews-key), he fries them in olive oil with salt, creating a peppery, crunchy bowl of fun.

The wine list is small but interesting, with two Italian sparkling wines and, by the glass, a white and red from California, a white and red from Italy, and a white and red from the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

The focus at Vignette is the pizzas, which are cooked in a blue-and white-tiled, wood burning oven imported from Naples. The temperature is a blazing 800 degrees Fahrenheit, so the pizzas cook in about two minutes.

The pies start as dough made from extra fine flour from Italy infused with Sonoma County’s naturally-occurring yeasts. The chef hand-spreads the dough into rounds about 10 inches in diameter with a thicker edge around the rim. The emphasis in Naples isn’t on loading them with intense sauce and lots of different toppings, but on a light swirl of fresh tomato sauce, good cheeses - including buffalo mozzarella - and toppings that make culinary sense together. Hopper strives for that, even using locally-produced buffalo mozzarella when it’s available, which is not always. In a departure from tradition, Hopper will cut the pizzas into quarters - but he will serve them unsliced, as in Italy, when requested.

There are six pizze (Italian plural for pizza) on the menu. I tried two. Pizza Margherita ($14 ????) featured that swirl of San Marzano plum-tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and grana padano cheese, basil and olive oil. The thin-crust center of the pizza is wet and floppy - just as they like it in Naples - so don’t complain about the center. The thicker rim has puffed beautifully and is dotted with little blackened burn spots, just as it should be. Appreciate what Hopper has gone through to bring you this fine facsimile. Just pretend The Barlow center is somewhere in Campania.

The Meatball Parm ($19 ????) has all the stylistic features of the classic pie, plus corbari tomato sauce made from small, dry-farmed tomatoes grown on volcanic soils in Campania. These rare tomatoes are super sweet and low in acid, and bring this pie to life. The house-made meatballs are spiced with bits of mortadella; there’s garlic, Parmigiano-Reggiano and mozzarella cheeses. The pizza is stupendous.

To sum up: Save the airfare and visit Naples in The Barlow.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for the Sonoma Living section. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.