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 couple of miles away from Inferno.2
Conte seems like a serious guy, and Inferno’s stark, tailored reclaimed walnut interior provides few distractions from the food’s seriousness. The unprinted menu obtained via QR code contains no cutesy pizza names or flowery language. The only touch of whimsy in the place is cute dragonflies tiled into the wood-burning oven representing Conte’s sons and late mother-in-law. That said, the chatty, convivial servers clad in soccer jerseys provide a welcome touch of humanity.
Inferno has a small menu with a handful of seasonal, curated first courses — primarily vegetables and salads. Service is swift and efficient, with waiters replacing handcrafted pottery plates and silverware between courses. With pizza so precious, no one wants to besmirch their pizza with leftover salad dressing on their plate.
The star of the show arrives on a simple plate. The Inferno pizza is topographically interesting, with a mountainous, dough-bubbled crust surrounding rivers of tomato sauce and land masses of cheese.
DishingPizza must confess to some initial disappointment with middle crust floppiness — even the vaunted Inferno Pizzeria cannot escape this inherent wood-fired style limitation. Biting into the pizza, DishingPizza forgot all about its initial criticism. This pizza has no weak links. The wood-fired crust is the best in the DMV — lightly charred and blistered, pillowy on the edges and chewy with a hint of sourdough in the middle. The San Marzano sauce has a richer flavor than most of the area’s Neapolitan competition. The milky, mild Fior di Latte is also top-notch. Each bite of the Inferno pizza brings a small dopamine hit to DishingPizza’s pleasure receptors.3
Inferno Pizzeria Napoletana has earned its spot on DishingPizza‘s ‘best pizza’ list. Dining at Inferno is an exceptional experience from start to finish, well worth the restaurant’s premium pricing. The service, ingredients, and presentation are triple aces.4
Readers just looking for DishingPizza‘s take on the pizza alone have permission to stop reading. The rest is about Inferno Pizzeria’s tagline that they’re ‘Open from 5 until the dough runs out.‘ DishingPizza previously attempted to eat at Inferno, showing up before 7:00 pm on a Saturday night, only to be turned away because the dough had, indeed, run out. A grumbling, disappointed DishingPizza went home empty-handed and hangry.
Conte notes on the website that we proof a specific amount of dough daily, no more, no less, to achieve that certain signature taste. The intentional proofing of small-batch dough is baked into the restaurant’s philosophy. Inferno is entirely transparent, with the tagline in clear print on the front door.
Proofing a fixed amount of dough daily shows a commitment to craft. Fermentation time, flour hydration, and temperature control all affect the final product, and scaling up isn’t necessarily as simple as “just make more.” One might reasonably argue that the pizza’s quality is because of that discipline. But is the fixed dough quantity actually necessary for quality, or is it a policy that also happens to drive demand by creating scarcity? If Conte could proof more dough but chooses not to, then this is a business decision dressed up as philosophy.
Go early. The pizza’s great. Bring plenty of money. And maybe call ahead.
Inferno Pizzeria Napoletana
12207 Darnestown Road, Darnestown, MD, 20878
Style: Wood-fired Neapolitan
Pizza quality: 🍕🍕🍕🍕
Overall experience: ⭐⭐
Pie (10″ round): $18.00
Pie price per square inch: $0.23
- Conte was the executive chef at Washington’s accredited multi-starred Oval Room, and previously the executive sous chef at the acclaimed Jean Georges in New York. ↩︎
- Everyone always says they’re resigning from high-powered positions to ‘spend more time with family.’ Turns out that Conte is the only one who means it. ↩︎
- And this is saying something. Readers will note DishingPizza’s complicated relationship with Neapolitan pizza, which makes this praise more meaningful. ↩︎
- At the end, a small, electronic credit card reader is left on the table — the digital equivalent of a paper check. Although Luddites may wish for paper menus and paper checks, Inferno’s paperless environmentalism dovetails with the entire streamlined operation. ↩︎