Delicious doc spotlights the Italian expat who taught Prague the meaning of pizza

In the fantastical courtroom of the Commedia dell'Arte masks, Pulcinella—the masked guardian of Neapolitan traditions—sits in judgment. 

The accused is Francesco “Frankie” Gallucci, an Italian expat in Prague who has committed the unthinkable crime: baking authentic Neapolitan pizza in a tiny electric oven, thousands of kilometers from Naples, without the sacred wood-fired hearth. The charge strikes at something every expat knows intimately: the tension between preserving where you’re from and adapting to where you are.

This whimsical trial frames “Frankie’s Way: An atypical pizza-at-home experience,” a documentary premiering Wednesday at Kino Pilotů that follows Gallucci’s unlikely journey from corporate employee to Prague’s apartment pizza phenomenon.

For four years, Gallucci was hosting twice-weekly pizza pickups from his apartment. Strangers would arrive after booking through Facebook to collect their margherita and quattro formaggi. They came for the pizza but lingered for something else: conversation in a cramped kitchen, the smell of 24-hour fermented dough, watching flour float through the air as Gallucci worked.

The 65-minute film captures how quickly word spread. What began as a home kitchen became a social hub where Czechs, Italians, and internationals gathered, united by San Marzano tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. Customers became regulars. Regulars became friends. Eventually, Gallucci left his day job entirely and started his own venture: Le Pizze di Frankie.

When Expats.cz interviewed Gallucci 11 years ago, even with no brick-and-mortar restaurant, he was redefining what pizza was in Prague; having pop ups at bars and restaurants around the city including the Italian bistro Don Totò in Anděl and the bar Vlkova 26 in Žižkov.

“Pizza is unfortunately often considered as a junk food, but it was born as a food made from fresh ingredients,” he told Expats.cz. “Since in Prague unfortunately there are not places which satisfy my needs, I decided to learn to make it.”

The documentary doesn't just chronicle his Prague journey. Cameras follow Gallucci back to Naples, visiting iconic pizzerias like L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele and the tomato fields that supply them. The audience are taken from Cosenza in southern Italy, where Gallucci grew up, to his current Prague operations—one location in Nusle, another near Manifesto Market.

Prague’s produce and artisan stores also earn praise in the film, as Gallucci sources ingredients like Apulian mozzarella, blending Italian techniques with local Czech materials.

Throughout, that playful Pulcinella trial weaves in and out, questioning whether tradition can survive modification. Can Neapolitan pizza exist without a wood oven? Can authenticity travel? The answer is in the faces of the people picking up dinner, in the expansion from apartment to shopfronts, in Gallucci's obvious pleasure at the work itself.

"If there's one thing I'll never get bored of," Gallucci says, "it's pizza." Pulcinella may doubt. Prague, apparently, does not.