There is a city in southern Brazil, among the mountains of the Serra Gaúcha, where the houses look like they belong to a village in Trentino and the cool air carries something ancient with it.
It is called Canela, and its roots are deeply Italian — Venetian and Lombard settlers who in the nineteenth century brought with them their traditions, their architecture, and a visceral relationship with food. This is where Peterson Secco built his story: first as a Brazilian pizzaiolo, then as custodian and ambassador of authentic Neapolitan pizza, and finally as instructor and driving force behind the AVPN school in Canela.
A story that begins with a signature — and with a single word: abbiamo.
The roots: mountains, Italy and a petition for Unesco
Peterson was born and raised in Canela. The landscape around him is that of a city that seems to want to remember where it came from: the buildings, the houses, the cool mountain climate — everything points back to an Italian memory embedded in the territory's DNA.
Before Neapolitan pizza there is Brazilian pizza, which Peterson knows and practices for years. But the turning point arrives in 2017, almost by chance, through a civic gesture: when the AVPN launches its petition to obtain Unesco recognition of Neapolitan pizza as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity, Peterson signs.
"I signed the petition, I started looking into the history of pizza, I found the association — and then Neapolitan pizza had a boom in Brazil. That's how I got closer, more or less."
A gradual, quiet process, built on curiosity and study. From 2018 Peterson works officially in Neapolitan pizza. But the real transformation — the one that turns a pizzaiolo into a custodian of a tradition — is deeper and slower.
The challenges: mozzarella, tomato, and explaining that Neapolitan is a style
Making authentic Neapolitan pizza in southern Brazil is not a matter of climate — the Serra Gaúcha, cool and humid, is actually a favorable environment for dough, and Italian flours have been arriving in Brazil since 2012. The real challenge is twofold: ingredients and culture.
"The big problem is always the buffalo mozzarella and the fiordilatte. Reproducing Neapolitan pizza with the right ingredients — that is truly difficult."
But there is an even subtler obstacle: the cultural one. In Brazil, for years, the word "napoletana" did not refer to a style of pizza — it referred to a topping. A specific combination of fiordilatte, sliced tomato and oregano, called "napoletano" with no connection whatsoever to Naples or its tradition.
"It was hard to explain that Neapolitan is a style, not a flavour. People thought that in a Neapolitan pizzeria there were only two choices: margherita or marinara. All the marketing was built around those two pizzas, and the broader gastronomic culture of Naples remained unknown."
Peterson's answer lies in communication — direct, simple, accessible. The menu at Abbiamo Fatto Pizza Napoletana is not just a list of pizzas: it is a glossary. Every term is explained, every ingredient described. What is scamorza, what distinguishes good buffalo mozzarella, why whole peeled tomatoes are used instead of tomato sauce. The customer arrives at the table already informed, already curious, already ready.
"We have to explain things simply. If you list too many different things, the customer gets scared — they think it's not for them, that it's too European, too expensive. You have to tell them: there are two types of pizza — the good kind and the kind that isn't."
The name: one word, one story, one dough
The name Abbiamo Fatto Pizza Napoletana was not born from a creative brainstorming session. It was born from a precise moment, from a word Peterson begins using with the Italian customers who walk into his Brazilian pizzeria, before the Neapolitan turning point.
"Abbiamo was the first word I ever spoke in Italian. I would say it to the customers who came in. And I always had a text in my head that said: abbiamo fatto l'impasto con un grammo di lievito per litro d'acqua — to say that it was a good dough, with a good fermentation, everything right."
That word — simple, inclusive, proud — becomes the name of the pizzeria. A name that is already a declaration: we made it, we chose it, we believed in something.
The pizza that takes you to Naples in two seconds
There is a pizza on Peterson's menu that is not just a pizza. It is a journey.
He makes it with red and yellow cherry tomatoes and anchovies — a combination that, the first time he tasted it, transported him somewhere else. Not just to Naples in general terms, but to a specific place, with a clear image in mind.
"It took me to Naples in two seconds. I always think of the area around Castel dell'Ovo — I don't know why, but it took me there. And when I came back from that two-second trip, I came back with a tear."
It was a difficult day. And that pizza, with its simplicity and its strength, did what only true things can do: it changed the atmosphere of the moment.
The AVPN school in Canela: from administrator to instructor, almost by accident
The AVPN school in Canela was not born from a strategic plan. It was born from a need, and grew through positive momentum — the momentum of students who came, learned, and returned to bring others.
At the beginning Peterson only handles the organisational side: he brings instructors from Naples, from Santiago de Chile, coordinates the courses, manages the logistics. His pizzeria in Canela becomes the natural place for hands-on training — a living laboratory where students learn not in a classroom but in a real, working pizzeria, day after day.
"I didn't expect it to become what it has become. It arrived in a way I hadn't anticipated. We started by doing only the administration, and then — after going through the course many times alongside the instructors — I became an instructor myself."
Today Peterson teaches with the same philosophy with which he makes his pizzas: putting his heart into it, explaining with patience, working on the practical side. His students are mostly professionals who already know pizza and want to make the leap — people who see the Neapolitan pizza course as something advanced, demanding, serious.
The biggest challenge in the classroom? The oven. The heat, the peel, the proximity to the flames — all of it intimidates those who have never worked with it before. Peterson uses repetition: approach, step back, try again, until the movement becomes natural.
"We do a lot of repetition, and by the end of the course things develop. But after that they have to keep training — they have to follow the oven every day."
And every course, he says, moves him. He cannot name a single student, because every story is special in its own way. "Every time I run a course there is a moment — mine or one of the students' — that makes me cry. Always."
The AVPN: a mother, not just an association
Peterson's relationship with the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana is not measured in certifications or years of membership. It is measured in something more intimate.
"For me the association is a great mother. When I need something, I call — and the mother always helps, with good advice. Not just about pizza, but about life."
Among the figures he names with gratitude are Giovanni Improta, Stefano Auricchio, Gianluca Liccardo, Antonio Anello — people who accompanied him not only in his technical training but in the human journey of becoming an instructor, of believing in his work, of carrying something important forward in a place far from Naples.
Brazil and Neapolitan pizza: a long road, walked one step at a time
Peterson has a precise metaphor for describing the relationship between Neapolitan pizza and Brazilian pizza in his country.
"Neapolitan pizza today is one. Tomorrow it is two. The day after, three. Brazilian pizza today is one million two hundred thousand. Tomorrow it is one million one hundred and ninety-nine thousand. There is a long road ahead."
But the road is being walked. And Peterson can see it, concretely, in the shift in everyday language: pizzerias talking about long fermentation, maturation, the open crumb, high-temperature cooking. Concepts that fifteen years ago no one would have understood, and which today circulate — still imperfectly, still slowly, but they circulate.
There is also a discovery that customers often make with surprise: Neapolitan pizza can be eaten alone. In Brazil, pizza is traditionally a shared food, divided into many slices among many people. A light, digestible pizza that you finish by yourself — it is almost an unexpected experience.
"You can't believe you ate a whole pizza by yourself. People are surprised. And they come back for that."
Love, passion, resilience: a pizza in three words
When asked to describe his pizza in three words — not ingredients, but sensations — Peterson chooses carefully.
"Love. Passion. And resilience."
Resilience, he explains, is a word that exists identically in Portuguese and in Italian. A word that crosses languages because it describes something universal: the ability to resist, to adapt, to keep going — even when the distances are enormous, even when the road is long, even when explaining what a real Neapolitan pizza is requires years of conversations, menus written like glossaries and tears in front of a plate of cherry tomatoes and anchovies.
Making Neapolitan pizza ten thousand kilometres from Naples, for Peterson, is not a responsibility in the heavy sense of the word. It is a vocation.
"I want to bring what I see in Naples, what I carry back from Naples, to as many people as possible. To bring them closer to Naples. To make them know something real."
From Canela, among the mountains of the Serra Gaúcha, with a name that is already a manifesto and a school that grows course after course, Peterson Secco is doing exactly that — one pizza at a time.
