From Somerset to Dodo: The Story Behind Our Mozzarella
It all started over a couple of pints in the pub…
A few years ago, Dodo co-founder and F&B Director Andy Holland was introduced to Cesco Amodiothrough a mutual friend in his local pub in the Cotswolds.
A few beers later and, inevitably, the conversation turned to cheese… as all good pub conversations do.
Cesco told Andy about Fratelli Amodio, the business he’d started with his brother Henry, making fresh Italian cheeses using British milk in the heart of Somerset.
For Andy, whose obsession with good food starts with where it comes from, who makes it and, most importantly, how good it tastes, it was a conversation that stuck.
Fast-forward a few years and Fratelli Amodio now makes the fresh fior di latte mozzarella you’ll find bubbling away on our Dodo pizzas.
So, we thought it was about time we paid Cesco a visit in Somerset, met the people behind our mozzarella and followed its journey from farm to Dodo pizza.
Meet Fratelli Amodio
Brothers Cesco and Henry Amodio set out in 2020 with a pretty simple ambition: to make seriously good, fresh Italian cheese here in the UK.
Before setting up shop, they spent months visiting and learning from mozzarella producers across Naples, Andria and Trentino, before finding the right home in Somerset’s Chew Valley.
Their caseificio — that’s a cheese factory to you and us — sits in the heart of British dairy country, just down the road from Chew Valley Dairy, where the milk used to make their cheese comes from.
And when we say just down the road, we mean it.
The milk travels just three miles to the caseificio and arrives fresh every day, no more than nine hours after milking.
From there, it’s turned into fresh fior di latte mozzarella using the traditional pasta filata method, where the curd is cooked and stretched to create that distinctive mozzarella texture.
They also make ricotta, burrata and stracciatella, with the same focus on freshness, quality and doing things properly.
Basically, if you’re going to spend an afternoon nerding out about cheese, this is a pretty good place to do it.
From Milk to Mozzarella
Cesco showed Andy around the caseificio and introduced him to Nicolò, Fratelli’s head casaro — or cheesemaker to you and us.
And Nicolò really knows his mozzarella.
He comes from a family of Sicilian cheesemakers and has more than 20 years of experience making pasta filata cheeses, with generations of cheesemaking knowledge behind him.
We got to see the whole process up close — from fresh British milk arriving from just down the road to the curd being worked and stretched into the mozzarella that eventually ends up melting on top of a Dodo pizza.
It looks simple.
It really isn’t.
Getting fior di latte right takes skill, precision and a proper understanding of the milk you’re working with. Fratelli even monitors things like the fat-to-protein ratio and pH of the milk to make sure the mozzarella has the right consistency, flavour and — very importantly for us — the perfect melt on a pizza.
And that’s exactly why days like this matter to us.
We’ve always believed that knowing our suppliers — properly knowing them — makes a difference.
It means knowing where our ingredients come from. Knowing the people who make them. Understanding their product. And having the kind of relationship where we can sit down together, talk about what we’re doing and keep finding ways to make it better.
Because great food doesn’t start when it arrives in a Dodo kitchen.
It starts with great ingredients and good people.
And sometimes, those relationships start over a couple of pints in the pub.
