Pizzeria Il Tamburello

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

Pizza è non per gustare, è per mangiare

"Pizza isn't for savoring — it's for eating." That phrase, spoken by Neapolitan pizzaiolo Adolfo Marletta to his apprentice on the streets of Naples, became the founding philosophy of Pizzeria Il Tamburello in Tokyo's Nihonbashi district.

The man behind the dough is Yoshihisa Otsubo, born in 1972 in Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima. At 22, backpacking through Italy, he walked into Da Michele and ate his first Neapolitan pizza — 5,000 lire, roughly 350 yen, and life-changing. At 27, he moved to Naples alone, eventually working at Pizzeria Spaghettata under Marletta from 1999 through 2002, with a six-month detour in Calabria. What he brought back wasn't just technique — it was a way of living around the oven.

Il Tamburello opened in the summer of 2010. The name means "tambourine" in Italian — an instrument, a rhythm, a daily act of stretching and firing dough as if playing music. That spirit earned the restaurant a 2-slice recognition from Gambero Rosso in 2026, one of the most respected Italian food guides in the world, a meaningful benchmark for a Neapolitan pizza house operating outside Italy.

The Craft, Ingredient by Ingredient

The flour comes from Caputo in Naples, the same mill Otsubo used during his apprenticeship. San Marzano-style tomatoes arrive from Salerno, sea salt from Trapani in Sicily, mozzarella from Caserta. The oven is a Stefano Ferrara — the wood-fired standard for serious Neapolitan pizza — with a hearth temperature of 450°C. Each dough ferments for 24 hours before spending just 90 seconds in the fire.

The menu spans classic pizza rossa and pizza bianca, from a stripped-back Marinara (tomato, garlic, oregano) and a proper Margherita to more layered options like the Tartufata — truffle paste, mozzarella, gorgonzola, acacia honey — or the house-named Tamburello with smoked buffalo mozzarella, salami, and cherry tomatoes. The Pizza Fritta, a traditional Neapolitan fried pocket filled with ricotta, smoked buffalo mozzarella, salami and tomato, nods directly to the street-food stalls Otsubo watched as a young traveler.

Antipasti lean into the same southern Italian vernacular: Masanelli (fried dough tossed in cherry tomato sauce, a staple from his training kitchen), Frittatina di Maccheroni (Naples street-food bechamel and bucatini croquettes from his mentor Gennaro's recipe), and baccalà fritto alongside fresh sardine marinades.

A Corner of Naples in Edo

Otsubo describes the Naples he trained in with specific, sensory detail — market noise, exhaust fumes, the shouts and laughter of Neapolitans, the smell of basil and fried dough. Il Tamburello is his attempt to carry some of that atmosphere to Nihonbashi, using Tokyo's own water alongside Italian imports, keeping prices honest, and treating pizza as everyday food rather than a dining event.

The Gambero Rosso recognition confirms what regulars already know: this is Neapolitan pizza made without compromise, in a city that takes its craft seriously.