Grana Pizzeria introduces Neapolitan style pizza to Kochi

Grana Pizzeria in Panampilly Nagar offers delicious Neapolitan-style pizzas, homemade dips, and decadent desserts in a chic setting.

The white funghi (mushroom) pizza at the recently-opened Grana Pizzeria in Panampilly Nagar in Kochi is a gorgeous 11-inch flavour bomb. The pale beauty, cooked in the Neapolitan style, with toppings of mozzarella, butter-sauteed mushrooms, caramelised onions, cream cheese, parmesan and truffle oil is a complex mix of flavours and textures. It has been worth the wait, for Irinjalakuda-native Abraham Mathew to finally open shop in Kochi. 

Making pizza started out as a hobby for Abraham, who studied to be a dentist. Spending lockdown, however at home, at Irinjalakuda, gave him time to research, for trial and error. He was due to open a restaurant when the pandemic struck, giving him the time to work on his pizza. 

The time spent perfecting pizzas gave him the confidence to make it for others. He documented his journey with the pizza on Instagram, finding followers along the way. Eventually when he started making them, as takeaway, in small batches, he found takers, some even travelling from as far away as Thiruvananthapuram. These were not regular ‘sales’,  just a casual announcement which would pop-up on his IG handle the day before and have people from Kochi and nearby places making a dash to Irinjalakuda. 

The orange and off-white of the interiors are a mix of chic, fast food places. The semi-circular seating is arranged around an open kitchen (where the pizza is made) — the focus of the action. You can see spheres of dough in transparent boxes as they await their turn, pizzas being stretched, cheese being grated… it is buzzing with activity.   

I am there on day two of the opening, as Abraham seems to be dealing with the minor glitches of running a new restaurant. There is a steady trickle of customers at lunch time. Grana is open from 12pm to 11pm, the first day they ran out of dough, he says, by 8pm.

Grana has an easy, relaxing vibe and is worthy of the Gram. Although there is other Italian fare such as a variety of pastas — ravioli, tortellini, spaghetti, and panuzzo (Italian pizza style sandwich), apart from starters and garlic breads (plain old garlic bread, caper chilli-cheese, chicken sausage-cheese and mushroom, bell peppers, pickled onions-cheese), I pick pizza because I have heard so much about Abraham’s pizzas. A word on the current menu — Abraham says that this is a trial menu which would, over time, evolve.

The round pizzas, baked the Neapolitan way, known for the simplicity of its ingredients and thinness, found their fans. And so, his opening a pizzeria, in Kochi, has created a buzz of expectations.