A chef is quite literally enjoying a taste of success after creating these pizzas – featuring famous faces.
Domenico Crolla, 46, uses a surgeon’s scalpel to create stunning likenesses of stars like Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Barack Obama out of cheese.
The award-winning restaurateur has even been asked to create a ‘personality pizza’ by Shannon Lee, daughter of martial arts legend Bruce Lee.
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And he was also commissioned to make Margherita mock-ups of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney by a US pizza magazine in the run-up to the recent election.
Father-of-two Dom, who owns Bella Napoli in Shawlands, Glasgow, said: “I got the idea from the Chinese table tradition of sculpting carrots and peppers into flower shapes.
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“I thought there must be something I can do with pizzas – so came up with this. I just use a tomato base and carve the faces from cheese.
“It takes about an hour to do each one, using a scalpel to get the detail. I think Marilyn Monroe was my own favourite.
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“The only problem is that the images only keep their shape for a short time after coming out of the oven.
“There is a real sense of satisfaction in making the pizzas because as far as I know it is something no other chef can do.
“I really enjoy it and my customers love to watch.”
His portrait pizza of Bruce Lee attracted the attention of the Enter the Dragon star’s daughter, who commissioned him to make one of her father for a charity auction.
The pizza will be made, coated in resin to preserve it and sold to the highest bidder in Hong Kong next year.
George Michael popped into Dom’s restaurant for a pizza when he played in Glasgow in September but was too shy to be photographed.
This week the eaterie was hailed as one of the best Italian restaurants in the UK, winning one of six gold awards from the Pizza and Pasta Association.
And next week he is going to London to receive a special award from the Italian Embassy for his work in promoting Italian culture abroad.
