By Lillian Aynes
Contrasting typical pizzerias in Atlanta, Pizza Verdura Sincera puts a twist on pizzas with an assortment of all plant-based only pizzas and salads.
Pizza Verdura Sincera opened its doors to the community on April 27, but the original idea for Pizza Verdura Sincera started in 2021 amid the pandemic. Other restaurants incorporate vegan or plant-based meat into their menu, often Impossible Burger, which became popular among consumers.
“During the pandemic, you couldn’t have a conversation without hearing people extolling the virtues of the Impossible Burger,” David Smith, owner of Pizza Verdura Sincera said. “It was in everything from fast food joints to steakhouses. Everyone had to serve the Impossible Burger.”
When other restaurants explored different menu possibilities with the Impossible Burger and other plant-based meat options, Smith focused on creating an all-natural pizza business.
“There was nobody taking leadership with respect to plant-based pizza,” Smith said. “The three most popular categories of fast casual food in America are pizza, burgers, and Tex-Mex. So we weren’t asking people to eat a category of food they didn’t already have a demonstrated love for, we were just offering them a different way to eat it.”
By prioritizing the use of natural and unprocessed ingredients, Smith said Pizza Verdura Sincera is able to provide a healthy alternative for people that allows them to still enjoy one of their favorite foods.
“We use ingredients that are either certified organic, non-GMO, kosher, or some combination of those attributes,” Smith said. “Every salad dressing is made from scratch in-house, every sauce for pizza is made from scratch in-house. The genesis for the recipes is how can we make the best possible pizza and how to not make it fake, and not make it a commodity, and not make it filled with highly processed or factory-based inputs.”
Smith said that he only ever considered using all-natural ingredients, rather than processed products.
“The alternative of not doing all-natural didn’t make sense to me,” Smith said. “If you’re saying, ‘We’re doing vegan, we’re doing this plant-based thing and it’s ethical, sustainable, health forward,’ but you’re using the world’s most hyper-processed inputs, those two things don’t make sense.”
Reed Sharpiro, Assistant General Manager of Pizza Verdura Sincera, said misconceptions can often over-complicate the creation of vegan foods. There are many plant-based products that replicate the flavor of commonly used ingredients derived from animals.
“People make vegan cooking a lot more difficult than it actually has to be,” Sharpiro said. “The thing with vegan food is you have to understand food science and how stuff tastes, and basically you’re having to substitute other ingredients to get the same result.”
Pizza Verdura Sincera is commonly known as a vegan restaurant, but the pizzas are not solely made for people with dietary restrictions. Smith said they are crafted to please a wide range of customers, using whole ingredients that can satisfy both vegans and non-vegans.
“Vegetarians and vegans maybe represent about 11% of the dining public in America, it’s not enough,” Smith said. “The biggest audience are flexitarians. It’s not some niche offering, it’s really for anybody. The majority of our guests have no dietary restrictions. They’re not vegetarian, they’re not vegan, they simply love great pizza made from all-natural ingredients.”
Robb Hart, executive chef of Pizza Verdura Sincera, said it is the first restaurant that has used all-natural and plant-based ingredients, while also respecting the traditional New York Neapolitan-style pizza.
“We’re the first of its kind ever that I know of to make pizza that can honor the Italian tradition and the craft of pizza and veganism to where if I didn’t tell you it was vegan you wouldn’t know it was vegan,” Hart said. “With the flour crust, not a cauliflower crust while honoring the traditional style of New York and New Jersey pizzas which we call New York Neopolitan, I think we’re pretty much the first.”
Just a few months after opening, Pizza Verdura Sincera became an immediate success. Smith said the restaurant’s unique take on traditional recipes led to positive responses from many customers.
“By our fourth month of business, we had already achieved the highest Google reviews for pizza in metro Atlanta, and that’s against everybody who uses cow and pig products,” Smith said.