What do you call an Italian restaurant that doesn’t serve pizza? During the 2022 Edinburgh fringe, Gusto’s restaurant in the city sounded like the punchline to one of the comedy festival’s jokes. Pizza wasn’t on the menu at the Italian restaurant because it had no maestro to wield the pala , the long-handled tray used to ferry the dough in and out of the kitchen’s searing-hot oven . “The fringe is our busiest month in Edinburgh but we had to close two days a week and couldn’t sell pizza,” says Gusto’s chief executive, Matt Snell. “Pizza chef is a skilled job and we could not find one. Our sales were a third of what they would…
