The great pizza master Franco Pepe was the last person in the world I would wish to offend. And yet I risked doing just that when, at Pepe in Grani, his pizzeria villa in Caiazzo, I finally and maybe foolishly dropped a confession the the acclaimed pizzaiolo:
Much as I revered Franco's signature pizza, the Sbagliata, a Margherita encrypted as if in Morse code with dots of basil and dashes of tomato, I confessed to Franco that I secretly preferred the regional Margherita he prepared for me in his father's way. Stefano Pepe sprinkled his vintage Margheria with the local oregano he picked in the Matese foothills.
This was an unorthodox addition: At the time, oregano was integral to the classic Marinara, but not the Neapolitan Margherita.