Located in an unassuming Darnestown strip mall, Inferno Pizzeria Napoletana (circa 2015) is the DMV’s most acclaimed Neapolitan pizzeria. Darnestown is an unlikely spot for pizza royalty, but pedigreed chef-owner Tony Conte1 lives just a…
Brookland, DC dive bar, Dew Drop Inn (circa 2015), and outdoor wood-fired pizza pop-up, Lazy Bones Pizza, have coexisted through a symbiotic, permanent vendor partnership since the Spring of 2025. Lazy Bones operates a physical…
To understand Roscoe’s Neapolitan Pizzeria, a Takoma Park stalwart since 2009, one must first understand its namesake, Roscoe the Rooster. Roscoe was a free-range cock-about-town in the 1990s who insouciantly eluded capture and crowed about…
Native Italians Antonio Matarazzo and chef Matteo Venini teamed up to open their first Stellina Pizzeria in 2019 in DC’s NoMa Union Market neighborhood. Even today, the rough edges of this lively, vibrant ‘hood are…
Terra Mare Restaurant & Bar in downtown Wheaton bills itself as an Italian restaurant. A Marra Forni commercial brick pizza oven sits front and center, establishing Terra Mare’s Neapolitan bona fides. Its menu contains Italian…
Alatri Bros. opened in 2017, inhabiting the sacred space once occupied by Mia’s Pizza, established in 2006, Bethesda’s first wood-fired pizzeria. Alatri Bros. is owned by the Pietrobono family, who also own Olazzo, around the…
With sky-high rents and fierce competition, downtown Bethesda has a real-time Darwinian restaurant scene.1 Even good restaurants unable to adapt are regularly forced to close when outclassed by better ones. Pizzeria Da Marco has been…
When Peter Pastan and Ruth Gressner opened the first Pizzeria Paradiso in Dupont Circle in 1991, they introduced the DMV to authentic wood-fired, Neapolitan-style pizza. Revolutionary change often has unexpected side effects. On the plus…
Tucked on 31st St, just off M Street, Il Canale has occupied prime Georgetown real estate since it opened in 2010. In a hood where explosive rents regularly blast restaurants into oblivion, Il Canale’s longevity…
If ChatGPT were asked to conjure a successful Italian restaurant, its criteria would probably describe Bethesda’s Piccoli Piatti Pizzeria. This upscale-casual eatery checks all the boxes: At Piccoli, customers order at the counter, are issued…