A pizzeria located on the ground floor of a student residence in Iasi has been included in the prestigious 50 Top Pizza Europa guide for the third consecutive year, remaining Romania's only representative in the 2026 ranking of Europe's best artisan pizzerias.

The awards ceremony took place on June 29 during the annual 50 Top Pizza event, which brings together some of Europe's leading pizzerias and pizza makers.

'This achievement is particularly meaningful for us because 50 Top Pizza brings together Europe's most highly regarded pizzerias in a competition featuring cities with strong culinary traditions such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Vienna, Copenhagen and Zurich. The fact that, for the third consecutive year, Romania is represented exclusively by a pizzeria from Iasi demonstrates that local gastronomy can compete at the highest European level,' said Alex Gafitianu, the restaurant's manager.

According to Gafitianu, the ranking is based exclusively on anonymous visits by independent inspectors, who pay for their meals like any other customer and subsequently submit their receipt and visit documentation to the organisers as proof that they received no preferential treatment.

He said the anonymous evaluation process is comparable to the model used by the Michelin Guide and is one of the reasons why 50 Top Pizza is regarded as one of the leading international authorities on artisan pizzerias.

'The biggest change in recent years has not been our recipes but the quality of our ingredients. We have invested considerable time in identifying producers and ingredients that meet the standards we set ourselves, and this process began well before our first inclusion in the 50 Top Pizza guide. For us at Zano, this recognition confirms that attention to every detail and consistency in selecting high-quality ingredients make the difference,' Gafitianu said. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Daniela Malache; EN - writing by: Simona Iacob)