PizzaExpress campaigns for ‘pizzaiolo' to be added to UK dictionaries
PizzaExpress has today launched a campaign to get the word "pizzaiolo" recognised in the UK.
The company said that despite pizza being one of the UK's favourite dishes, the Italian term used to describe pizza chefs is not included in the likes of the Collins and Chambers dictionaries.
This means that the word cannot officially be used in the board game Scrabble.
PizzaExpress is calling on the dictionaries concerned to include ‘pizzaiolo' and is pressing for the term to be legally recognised by Scrabble tournaments, Scrabble clubs and by the Scrabble app from EA Games, much in the same way that the term ‘barista' is.
There is only one "Z" Scrabble tile, so players would need to use a blank tile to play the word, which has a basic score of 19.
PizzaExpress launched in the UK in 1965 and has since trained up more than 10,000 pizzaiolos.
Urbano Lopez at PizzaExpress in Fulham is the company's longest serving pizzaiolo, having freshly prepared pizzas for 35 years, while the company's youngest ever pizzaiolo is 16-year- old Lauren Cane from Aldershot.