Located off the intersection of Monroe and Piedmont, this isn’t just another Neapolitan pizzeria with a claim to authenticity. A true son of sunny Naples who previously worked at Antico Pizza, Luca Varuni has built a spacious dining room around a shiny, open kitchen that delivers appropriately thin and beautifully charred pies. Fifteen variations, many without sauce, and a build-your-own option pull in Morningside families who crowd the space nightly. (Varuni is open for lunch only on weekends.) We’re drawn to the simple margherita and the earthy Spacca Napoli with oak-roasted mushrooms and caramelized onions; both boast an aromatic splendor that reminds us of Italy. Skip the appetizers and eat your pie quickly: The crust loses its vigor as it cools
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Bottega Luisa
Giovanni Di Palma recently expanded his empire with Italian grocery Bottega Luisa, across the street from his own Antico Pizza, Caffe Gio, and Gio’s Chicken Amalfitano. Named after Di Palma’s grandmother, the bottega sells personal-sized pies from Antico and prepared pastas from Gio’s, as well as cured meats and desserts like gelato and cheesecake. Both the bottega and Bar Amalfi, the limoncello bar next door, bring Di Palma one step closer to completing the Piazza San Gennaro, Westside’s own Little Italy.
Don Antonio by Startita
For the next chapter in Atlanta’s unexpected pizza preeminence, a restaurant run by two New York–based pie masters has opened quietly in Buckhead. Antonio Starita owns an eponymous pizza joint in Naples. Roberto Caporuscio, his protégé, is the U.S. president of the Association of Neapolitan Pizza Makers. He also owns Kesté Pizza and Vino, along with the original location of Don Antonio by Starita, both in Manhattan. The menu of more than sixty varieties of pizza can overwhelm, but zero in on the Montanara: Its dough is flash-fried before being topped with ingredients, including smoked mozzarella, and baked in a wood-burning oven. The interplay of textures and flavors alone is worth a visit. This outpost of Don Antonio replaced under-trafficked STG Trattoria, though STG’s owner, Brian Lewis, has a minority stake in the new venture. The place hides in the back of a strip mall next to the St. Regis Atlanta. We’ll see if the Italian star power can help lift the curse from this location and draw the crowds.
Romeo’s New York Pizza
Emory students and Druid Hills residents are now discovering what suburbanites north of the city already know: There is more to our pizza culture than the expensive Neapolitan pies that have dominated the scene for the last several years. Owner Gene Romeo’s grandfather started a pizza place in New Jersey in 1945; the grandson started franchises first in Johns Creek, then in Alpharetta, Lawrence-ville, and Canton. The restaurant’s first venture inside the Perimeter, in Emory Village, opened in October and delivers a true New York experience: thin, crisp, foldable crust that holds ingredients without turning to a sodden mess; zesty red sauce; and toppings that cost $1.40 to $1.90 apiece. A $6 lunch deal gets you either two slices and a drink, or one slice, a drink, and a small salad. Look for log-shaped stromboli and try a pie crowned with ricotta, onions, and meatballs, a recommendation from one of the pizza makers.
Ammazza
For the next chapter of the Old Fourth Ward’s continuing culinary makeover, brothers Hugh and Jason Connerty—alums of Antico Pizza Napoletana—took over a handsome brick building, installing tiled wood-fired pizza ovens behind glass and a dining room lined with a mix of reclaimed woods. (The restaurant also offers plenty of parking, a rarity for the neighborhood.)
The pizzas, charred on the bottom and with the proper swollen edges, are sized for sharing at sixteen inches. Home in on classic combinations like the Bolognese, crowned with meatballs, sausage, housemade mozzarella, and ricotta. You typically order at a front counter, though after finding a table we’ve also requested food from servers, who will fetch draft beer, wine, or cocktails from the back-wall bar but leave you to retrieve your own plates, glasses, and condiments.
STG Trattoria
What a casual, welcome departure for the Buckhead restaurant scene. Brian Lewis, owner of Westside’s Bocado, brings modern Italian dining to a redeveloped shopping center next to the St. Regis Atlanta. A narrow entrance hallway flanked with wine bottles leads to a breezy, open room dominated by central communal seating. Executive chef Joshua Hopkins (formerly of Abattoir) heads a kitchen that specializes in Neapolitan-style pizzas baked in wood-burning ovens, but the cooks also produce lovely small plates like anchovies and veal tongue on toast, as well as a short list of pastas.
The beverage program is equally impressive, featuring an all-Italian wine list presented on an iPad and surprisingly light cocktails based on amaros, herbal Italian digestifs.
Tartufo Pizzeria
The sliding door that connects La Fourchette to its next-door sibling, an adorable new pizza joint, is a stroke of genius. It not only acts like an open border between two worlds, but it also allows La Fourchette’s smart wine program to legally cross over. A customer dazzled by the refinements of a thin pie with local eggs cracked over a layer of ricotta perfumed with Parmigiano-Reggiano and fruity olive oil could, for example, pair it with an appropriately earthy Pinot Noir from Burgundy.
The pizzas—which measure fourteen inches, enough to feed one voracious appetite or two more modest ones—are stellar. Ingredients such as grilled artichoke, sweet peppers, pesto, and fresh mozzarella or caramelized onion and arugula with truffle oil rest lightly on delicate, handsomely charred crusts.
The restaurant makes its own gelato in flavors such as tiramisu, yogurt and blueberries, and rosemary vanilla. Tartufo’s long and narrow proportions perfectly suit the sleek design that includes a splendid community table. The atmosphere transcends Italian machismo and Buckhead pretensions.
Sapori di Napoli
Neapolitan pizza is the house specialty at the informal restaurant that brothers Ambrogio and Daniele Florio created as a beacon of Southern Italian authenticity. An Acunto wood-burning oven imported from Italy (the same type of oven used by Antico across town) delivers tender crust and medium char to pies that are larger than most of the Naples-style pies served around the metro area. The decor is spare and the kitchen needs to sharpen its recipes for panini, pasta, and insalata, but the pizzas are an instant hit, especially if you choose one with a red-sauce base, such as the classic Margherita, over a pizza bianca (no sauce). As Decatur’s dining scene becomes ever buzzier, the quiet location a couple blocks from the square and the ample parking feel like a relief.
Double Zero Napoletana
The name refers to the grade of refined flour preferred in Naples for pizza dough, and most of the topping combinations on the handsome pizzas are admirably restrained (the Double Zero—with arugula, prosciutto, and basil oil—is one of the busier creations). This place is far from a simple pizza joint, though: The sweeping, frequently overblown menu also includes a dozen small plates; pastas; and main courses like seared scallops served with fennel and orange salad, olives, salsa verde, and farro. Look for traditional Italian desserts served in the cafe near the entrance.
Piola
The menu lists more than fifty variations of pizza: You can go traditional (Regina Margherita), or retro (the Mareverde, with a combination of shrimp and brie that harkens to the chain’s eighties origins), or choose from among eight white pizzas. Stop by on the twenty-ninth of each month when the restaurant serves all-you-can-eat gnocchi for good luck, a custom adopted from Argentina.
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