Du De Cope

A founder keeping freshness at the pass

Freshness decides the cut before the plate leaves the pass. Simone Lugoboni, chef at Du De Cope in Verona, applies that rule inside a pizzeria built around heat, dough, and the rhythm of a full room. His own line is plain: "If it doesn't, it's not fresh." At this address, where he has been founder and restaurateur since 2005, that standard meets a more casual format than some of his other Verona rooms, but the discipline does not loosen. Lugoboni’s earlier collaborator roles at Locanda dell'Angelo in Ameglia and Enoteca Capranica in Rome gave him the base craft of service under pressure: timing, repetition, and the habit of keeping a kitchen steady when the room is moving. His public account names collaborator roles rather than a single master, so the lineage here is read through practice, not through one declared apprenticeship. The work at Du De Cope sits in that line. The chef’s broader rule, that food must be good, beautiful, and healthy, finds a direct form in pizza: flour, fermentation, fire, topping, then the table.

Forty eight hours before the oven

The program turns on a 48-hour fermented dough made with heritage grains. That duration matters because pizza gives the maker few places to hide; the dough carries the first judgement before tomato, cheese, or salumi enter the frame. Du De Cope works in a Neapolitan wood-fired register, with a wood-burning oven built by Neapolitan artisans dominating the room. The oven is not background equipment. It sets the tempo of the station, pulling the kitchen toward short decisions and repeated gestures: stretch, dress, turn, pull. Capricciosa is the named signature, a pizza that depends on proportion as much as abundance. In a kitchen guided by freshness, the point is not novelty but handling, the correct edge between a fermented base and ingredients that still read clearly after the heat. Beverage stays narrow, with beer and wine as the practical partners to the crust, not a separate performance. The method asks for attention before service begins.

Yellow walls and the oven in view

The room gives the craft little privacy. Warm yellow walls, colorful Vietri majolica tiles, and the oven’s mass pull the eye toward the bench-side work, while the counter and tables absorb the noise of a busy service. Du De Cope is lively and loud, but the casual energy has its own discipline: plates move, orders compress, and the pass has to keep faith with the dough that began its work long before the first guest sat down. The contemporary brightness keeps the room from feeling heavy, even with the wood fire at its center. In that setting, Lugoboni’s transmission ethic becomes practical. "Everything I have learned here I will try to pass on to my customer," he has said, and at Du De Cope the lesson arrives through Capricciosa, heritage grain, and the Neapolitan oven.