A new generation of pizza and pasta

753 Edgewood Ave., Atlanta. 404-577-2332, boccalupoatl.com. $$-$$$

You might say that Neapolitan-style pizza is a four-year-old trend. The transformative pizzerias opened, the copycats came and went, and we should be on the next big thing.

Please. It wasn’t a trend so much as a realignment of expectations. We no longer judge pizza exclusively by New York criteria, i.e., if it doesn’t give good slice, then it’s not worth getting the extra-large to bring home.

Now we’ve grown accustomed to thinking of pizza much more like Europeans (not just Italians, but all Europeans). It’s a dish you order and eat in a certain kind of inexpensive restaurant because you want the crust crisp and puffy, the mozzarella puddly, and the smell of oven char still wafting off the pie. It doesn’t go with beer and pretzels, but rather wine and salad. So Neapolitan pizza restaurants — here, there, and everywhere — keep opening apace.

If you haven’t gotten sick of this kind of pizza (is it even possible?), you will want to check out the new Buckhead venue with the rococo name — Don Antonio by Starita.

This restaurant is an offshoot of a well liked spot in New York’s theater district run by two men who have seen greater pizza fame elsewhere. Roberto Caporuscio runs Kesté Pizza & Vino in the West Village, while Antonio Starita is the third-generation owner of the iconic Pizzeria Starita in Naples. They arrived in Atlanta at the behest of Brian Lewis, who engaged them to take over his struggling STG Trattoria.

Gone is STG’s sense of chic aspiration. No more wine vault, iPads, counter seating, fussy aperitivos — none of it. Instead, we have a restaurant that looks like, well, a come-hither place in the theater district. Pine tables. Bright lights. Carafes of cheap wine. A comfortable Italian restaurant by anyone’s reckoning. The menu, huge and slickly produced, gives off the same high-volume Euro vibe as that at La Tagliatella.

But, unlike that import, the focus on craftsmanship is more apparent here. The kitchen remains open, as it was in the STG days, and its two spitting-hot brick pizza ovens still flank the corners. If you look behind the glass wall into the back prep area, you will espy a cook hand stretching balls of lustrous fresh mozzarella and burrata throughout the evening.

You can order some as an appetizer, although I wouldn’t rush to the truffle burrata, which comes filled with a ricotta-like pasty scoop of truffle-flecked cheese rather than the cream-imbued shreds you’d find inside a superior version. Three slivers of supermarket-quality prosciutto, a swipe of balsamic syrup and a zigzag-cut half tomato serve as perfunctory plate mates.

No, you’re not here for ingredient worship, you’re here to try an intriguing-sounding pizza from one of those ovens. I think you’ll find something to like.

While Caporuscio hews strictly to the rules for making a true Neapolitan crust, he cuts loose with the toppings. Try that fresh mozzarella on a pizza with pistachio pesto and sausage, and you will find a new friend for life. Other pies come with, say, walnut cream and porcini mushrooms or butternut squash and zucchini. The crust — pillowy soft, tangy, well salted and nicely charred — plays its supporting role with aplomb.

The house speciality is a kind of deeply cupped fried pizza, the Montanara Starita. This award-winner features flavorful pellets of smoked mozzarella and a signature tomato sauce that is thick, crimson and salted to a pitch. I like it but will need another to see if the feeling blossoms into love.

I know a serious cohort of Atlantans will be thrilled to hear this restaurant also makes a legit gluten-free product that blisters and puffs in the oven.

By this point you may want to ask me how Don Antonio by Starita ranks in comparison with Antico Pizza Napoletana or Varasano’s. To which I would respond, “Does it have to?”

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Freud said there were two essential human instincts — eros and thanatos, sex and death. But BoccaLupo chef-owner Bruce Logue proves there is a third: noodleos, a compulsion deep in our souls that tells us to bury our faces in bowl after bowl of his delicious pasta.

Logue understands the primeval pleasure of pasta like no other cook I know. All pasta. He appreciates the chewy tug of dried macaroni that you chase and spear with your fork, the silk of fresh fettuccine that you twirl and inhale, the crisp edges and steamy pockets of baked cannelloni.

His menu — a few antipasti, a few desserts, an entree special or two but pasta, pasta, pasta — is a love song to the endless possibilities that start with flour and water.

In her four-star review of the Inman Park restaurant last September, Jenny Turknett said that BoccaLupo “had the makings of Atlanta’s next great restaurant.” It’s already there if you’re just taking into account the sheer pleasure you get from eating here.

Would you like a rundown of our last meal? Glad to provide. We began with my must-have starter — Roman-style fried cauliflower with mint, capers and Meyer lemon, the bulky but light-on-the-arteries dish you want before you lose yourself deep in pasta love.

Something called “surprisingly good kale” spoke to us from the menu, and it was: spicy, toothsome, salty, licked with fat and set atop squares of fried polenta with pickled shrimp.

My daughter, who could eat nothing but Southern and Japanese food for the rest of her life, couldn’t resist the BoccaLupo ramen. These chewy, squid ink-black noodles come in a collard green and pork stock with the greens, a poached egg and boiled peanuts. You could see the light touch and soulful layering of flavors before taking a bite.

I got the crispy white lasagna — dozens of thin layers of pasta flecked with béchamel and finely ground meat, served in a mile-high slice that had been seared to a crisp in a hot skillet. It came over a luscious fontina fonduta sauce with a bright scattering of dressed watercress for contrast. My kid and I laughed; it looked like we had each other’s order. We were happy to share, unwilling to trade.

Where does Logue get his ideas? He takes some. His black spaghetti with hot sausage and shrimp comes courtesy of the New York restaurant Babbo, where he used to work, and the lasagna is a version of the 100-layer lasagna served at Babbo’s sister, Del Posto. I wouldn’t be surprised if others came from the various restaurants he trained at in Italy.

But it all comes from the heart. One bite, and you know this. Logue may pay silent tribute to his mentors, but it’s all in service of giving you that moment with a bowl of his pasta. You and your noodles. Eros and thanatos can take a hike; you’re busy eating.