VARUNI NAPOLI
Overall rating: 2 of 5 stars
Food: Neapolitan pizza
Service: responsive
Best dishes: red pizzas, including the Margherita and Amore Mio
Vegetarian selections: salad, pizzas
Price range: $$-$$$
Credit cards: all major credit cards
Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sundays, 5:30-11 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 5:30 p.m.-midnight Fridays, 11 a.m.-midnight Saturdays
Children: definitely, particularly for weekend lunch and early evening
Parking: valet or free lot behind the restaurant
Reservations: no
Wheelchair access: yes
Smoking: no
Noise level: moderate to high
Patio: yes, a nice space
Takeout: yes, but you have to order in person and wait
Address, phone: 1540 Monroe Drive N.E., Atlanta. 404-709-2690.
Website: www.varuni.us
Maybe I should have majored in business. These days it seems that, to be successful, a restaurant needs a little more than just tasty victuals. It must engage in some savvy strategic business maneuvering. It needs some special magic.
Take Neapolitan pizza. Having sampled the goods, Atlanta is primed for more. This has fueled a wave of wood-burning oven pizza joints hanging out their shingles — both inside the Perimeter and out. But, as the influx of competition keeps the market healthy, competitors scramble to carve out a niche for themselves and to step out of the shadow of Antico, Atlanta’s bastion of Neapolitan pizza.
Consider the newly minted Varuni Napoli, located in Morningside. Here, the comparison with Antico is quite inevitable, particularly given that this new spot’s chef and co-owner, Luca Varuni, was formerly Antico’s prime pizzaiolo.
How will Varuni Napoli distinguish itself? Varuni will tell you that it’s through sourcing, refusing to let the quality of his ingredients slide once the restaurant has built a following. He’ll tell you that it’s also through customer service, taking care of patrons beyond the moment that they pre-pay for their meals.
Varuni Napoli has been built. The question isn’t whether customers will come, it’s whether they will come back. The resounding answer is yes.
They’ll return to experience the togetherness that co-owner-architect Giancarlo Pirrone’s design fosters, with tables large enough for communal dining and separate dining spaces conceived for varied experiences. They’ll be back for table visits from a smiling Varuni, so passionate about the products he imports from his native Naples. And they’ll come for the beautifully irregular handmade Neapolitan pizzas cooked in the wood-burning ovens on display, even if they aren’t precisely the best specimens they’ve tasted. They are good enough.
The key to Varuni’s success is in building relationships. His brand of hospitality is so authentic and genuine, not something that can be learned in business school. That transfers to his establishment, where his larger-than-life personality warms the gleaming white-toned restaurant.
Varuni enjoys people, even mini-sized patrons. Children are invited to sit at the long marble counter with a prime view into the kitchen to watch as portions of dough are cut and shaped. If they’re lucky, a cook will slip them a fistful of dough. Varuni scoops toddlers up as his own and whisks them into the kitchen for an up-close peek at the Naples-sky-blue ovens. Upon departing, boys get a hearty handshake and girls (including my own blushing 9-year old) a quick peck on the cheek. You can imagine all the little Atlanta pizza aficionados that now ask mom and dad find time to go see Mr. Luca. Good business.
Yet, all guests receive the same warmth and welcome, even as the sun sets, children disappear, and Varuni Napoli morphs into a convivial adult hangout complete with a handsome wooden bar serving a small selection of wines and beer.
Varuni Napoli also attempts to distinguish itself with transparency. Its menu boasts, “There are no secrets: Our quality products and ingredients are showcased for the joy and appreciation of all guests.”
Ask, and you shall be told. Pizza crusts are made with 00 flour and topped with imported DOP/DOC ingredients. According to Varuni, his crusts are lighter and sweeter because of the natural airborne yeast collected during the slow dough rising process.
He’s right that the crusts here are lighter and less dense, but the slight sweetness overtakes the yeasty tang I crave in a good dough. And because they are handmade, you’ll find the crusts inconsistent in thickness and darkness. Occasionally, they are sturdy enough to fold-and-hold and other times far too floppy. And often they sport only a brownish lacy pattern, the precursor to the hallmark blackened blisters of this style.
The restaurant offers a range of white- and red-sauced pies. Call me a red-sauce girl, because I much prefer those that fall in this category, likely due to the gentle acidity provided by the San Marzano tomatoes that replaces the dough’s missing yeasty burst.
Of course, you can’t go wrong with the Margherita pizza ($15), with melty mounds of fresh buffalo mozzarella. But you’ll want to be a little more adventuresome and try one of the artisan pizzas, like the Amore Mio ($18), adorned with charred basil leaves, fresh-roasted artichokes, frayed strips of sweet sopressata, black olives and plugs of that same mozzarella.
The white pizzas, like the Spacca Napoli ($21), are also very alluring. Sorrento extra virgin olive oil lines the crust before toppings are added. Think creamy smears of buffalo ricotta, smudgy cubes of Taleggio cheese and bits of pancetta. Add black truffle oil and thin segments of lardo and now you’ve crossed into excessive decadence. A little acidity could go a long way here.
The pizza menu is rounded out with platters of tangy burrata ($11) or full antipasto trays ($18). You could make a meal of the antipasto spread of soft Taleggio cheese, mixed olives, folds of prosciutto di Parma, rounds of sopressata and a dish of housemade ndjua.
Varuni Napoli also offers street snacks, like the cardboard cone of cuoppo ($10) spilling oversized beef-and-pea arancini and bland potato-stuffed panzerotti. Once the restaurant nails down the pizza, they can revisit the snacks.
Luca Varuni has successfully nudged Varuni Napoli out of the looming shadow of competitors by building community. It doesn’t take a business degree to see that.
