When owner Giovanni Di Palma and his crew started making fabulous Neapolitan-style pies in the back of this former bakery near Georgia Tech, they had little to offer their customers in terms of creature comforts. Everybody ate standing up around a huge wooden table, reaching for oily sweet peppers and fresh garlic to season the already-glorious margheritas and biancas with swollen edges and a good char.

Now that there are chairs, stools, and even a chef's table available by reservation, early fans can recommend the place to their cushier friends. This pizza sensation remains still an ebullient madhouse: On Fridays and Saturdays, the cooks shovel 750 pies in and out of the three imported ovens before the dough runs out.

We recommend the Gigiotto, a racy calzone with rapini and sausage, and the San Gennaro pizza crowned with spicy-sweet peppers, cipollini onions, sausage, and buffalo mozzarella. A cannolo crusted with pistachios or a sfogliatelle (tricornered pastry filled with sweetened ricotta) completes the gluttony.

Photo by Iain Bagwell