Vespa Healthy Italian Café

Vespa Healthy Italian Café serves Pinsa Romana, the Roman flatbread that most visitors to Arizona have never encountered. It is not pizza, though it shares a silhouette. The dough is a blend of three Italian flours — soft wheat, rice and soy — mixed at eighty-five percent hydration and left to ferment cold for seventy-two hours before it ever reaches the oven. Four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, sea salt. Nothing else.

The style has a claim to Arizona's attention beyond novelty. In May 2025 the Lazio region entered pinsa romana in its official register of traditional agri-food products, and the flour we use is milled outside Rome by the producer who developed the modern recipe.

The café is family-run. The Zacchino family opened their first Arizona restaurant in Phoenix in 1996 and came to Sedona to cook something narrower and more particular. Two Italian regions meet in the kitchen — Sicily on one side, Piemonte on the other — and the espresso is Miscela d'Oro, the same Sicilian roast the family's grandparents poured in their coffee bar in Torino.

Visitors find a short menu built around the bread: pinsa, filled sorrisi sandwiches, salads on organic greens, four baked entrées, and an espresso bar run the Italian way, where a macchiato is served in porcelain and drunk standing. Dogs are welcome on the outdoor patio. Catering is available for weddings and events across the Verde Valley. Open daily, 11am to 9pm.