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Phantom Gourmet: Babbo Pizzeria e Enoteca

BOSTON (CBS) -- Mario LaPosta was pretty much born to be a chef.

"From the age of five, my nicknames were Mario Mozzarella and Mario Meatball and pizza was my favorite food. My whole entire life I said, I'm going to become a pizza maker and have my own pizzeria and this and that," said Mario.

And now he is at Babbo Pizzeria e Enoteca, located in Boston's Seaport.

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Babbo Pizzeria e Enoteca (WBZ-TV)

Babbo is big and beautiful. The active and attractive dining room is almost nine thousand square feet and features three different bars including a cocktail bar pouring hundreds of Italian wines, an antipasti bar where artisan meats are sliced before your eyes, and a pizza bar where the wood-burning oven is always busy.

"The guys are cooking, you know 200-300 pies over a couple of hours, and you just get to see all the action right there."

babbo
Babbo Pizzeria e Enoteca (WBZ-TV)

And those pizzas are some of the best outside of Italy. "You're going to taste the dough, you're going to taste those sweet tomatoes, the fresh mozzarella, a little hint of the basil and you're just going to be in heaven," said Mario.

In addition to the pizzas, there are perfect pastas, made in house of course, meatballs that are a must order, shareable platters of imported meats and cheeses, and pillowy fried dough showered with shaved pecorino. "What we do here is we use our pizza dough to make it and our pizza dough is deliciously fried. So we cut these little squares of the dough, we lightly fry them until they're just crisp and then we put some pecorino romano on top and it's mouthwatering."

pasta
Babbo Pizzeria e Enoteca (WBZ-TV)

Mario added, "I've just been obsessed with everything from restaurants and cooking and it's just something that I loved to do and you know it's a really challenging, hard profession, but it's something that doesn't go away and I don't think will ever go away it's just part of who I am."

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