I’ve written about some pretty delicious Neapolitan-adjacent pizza from around Kansas City–and contrasted it with the hot steaming garbage served at Minsky’s. By adjacent, I mean outstanding pizza cooked in a hot wood-fired oven with a thinness and consistency approaching the Neapolitan style, but is probably cooked at not-quite-hot-enough temperatures (maybe 700 instead of 1,000 degrees) to permit it to cook in under 90 seconds and achieve the signature leopardizing charred black spotting on the puffed-up-in-places crust while retaining a softer middle. If you’d like to eat pizza that is truly authentic in the Neapolitan style, might I direct you to Il Lazzarone.
The pizza pictured above is a sausage pesto with tomato. It is explosively flavorful, with fennel-forward sausage and garlic- and pine nut-forward pesto. Our waitress maintained that only four ovens like theirs (including theirs) were imported to the United States from Naples, and that the oven is the secret to hitting the necessary temps. They do a 60-second cook. It was everything you want out of a Neapolitan pizza. The crust was light, puffy in places, charred nicely, and soft in the middle, and the ingredients perfectly proportioned. Here are a couple additional nicely balanced, perfectly executed pizzas:
We also started with a perfectly nice (pretty standard) arugula salad. I ordered a beer with horchata notes (good beer list).
Finally, an old crowd pleaser — a Nutella pizza with strawberries is a fun finish for the whole family! I particularly appreciated this because I’ve removed Nutella from my home (I eat the jar).
So eat here! It’s River Market area. Worth the drive even if you’re in the suburbs. Happy eating!