It was the authentic Neapolitan pizza I went for, but it was the spaghetti carbonara ($16) that I loved and dreamed about for days afterward. A large, glorious bowl of pasta, eggs, pancetta, Parmesan and olive oil in perfect harmony. It sat before me like a golden nest, velvety but not runny, the sauce adhering to the fork as I twisted and spun the noodles around a spoon. No cream in the sauce, just raw eggs cooked by the hot pasta.
According to Costas Eleftheriadis, owner of Napoletana Pizzeria in Mountain View, all the recipes he uses are from his grandmother in Naples. Nonna was a great cook.
Carbonara has been fancified since its humble origins. Alan Davidson in "The Oxford Companion to Food" suggests that spaghetti alla carbonara was created in Rome in 1944 with American occupation troops sharing their abundant rations of eggs and bacon with local chefs. Naples isn't Rome, but the way Napoletana makes it, it's about the best carbonara I've had either here or in Italy.
The fettuccine alla Bolognese ($18), made with minced beef and tomato sauce, was also delicious, with an abundance of meat and not overly sauced. In Italy, ragù alla Bolognese dresses the pasta, not drowns it. The kitchen at Napoletana struck the right balance. The sauce was made with Italian plum tomatoes, garlic, carrots, onion and celery, and was modestly seasoned and abundantly delicious.
Napoletana is famed for its authentic Neapolitan pizza. Eleftheriadis earned his VPN certification in 2010 from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, an international organization established in 1984 to cultivate the culinary art of Neapolitan pizza. The organization offers classes, workshops and training. It's not like earning an MBA in pizza-making, but the Associazione teaches methods and techniques and has specifications to maintain the best Neapolitan standards.
One VPN requisite is a wood-fired dome oven that maintains a temperature of at least 900 F. Pizzas are fully baked in 60 to 90 seconds. Fortuitously, Eleftheriadis found a spot that had an existing wood-fired oven when he opened in 2011. The small space, adjacent to Cost Plus in a strip mall, had housed a hodgepodge of restaurants over the years and the oven had been idle for some time. He uses a combination of walnut, almond and oak hardwoods in his oven.
"They burn hotter, with no smoke, and maintain a nice even heat," Eleftheriadis said.
Eleftheriadis only uses flour, water, salt and natural yeast to make his pizza dough. The wheat flour, type "00" or doppio zero, is imported from Italy. It's lower in protein and gluten than American flours, mellower, more supple and easier to shape. The resulting pizza crusts are light, airy and have a crisp snap, with just a slight blistering around the edges.
Eleftheriadis changed careers when the company he worked for as a pilot and flight instructor consolidated local operations in Connecticut. He became interested in pizza-making while visiting family in Naples.
All the pizza varieties Eleftheriadis makes are combinations found in Naples -- no pepperoni, no bacon-stuffed crusts and no pineapple.
The Napoletana pizza ($18) came topped with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, a generous amount of homemade Italian sausage, basil leaves and drizzled with olive oil. It was my personal favorite, though Eleftheriadis says the Margherita is his best seller.
The Napoletana looked as good as it tasted, with succulent slices, luxuriously layered, slightly aromatic and a slight tang to the crust and hint of spiciness in the sausage. The thin pizza cooled down within a minute or two and was easy to handle without utensils.
The bianca al prosciutto ($17) was covered with fresh mozzarella and garlic and topped with sweet Parma prosciutto curls and crisp, peppery arugula.
Napoletana seats just over 40, so arriving early is advisable. The restaurant doesn't deliver, but it does offer take-out. Besides pizza and pasta, there is a small selection of soups, salads, antipasti and a dozen reasonably priced wines and beers.
I was fascinated by the dessert menu's eight options, all frozen and imported from Italy. Not only were the desserts tasty, the presentation was high-quality. The limoncello tartufo ($6) with lemon gelato and a frozen limoncello core came covered with meringue sprinkles. It was zesty, clean and vibrant, a yellowy dome of creamy delight.
Coppa mascarpone ($7) was luscious chocolate cream layered with silky mascarpone, and topped with crunchy amaretto cookie crumbs and tiny chocolate curls.
Napoletana is a small restaurant with a justifiably large reputation. Eleftheriadis has been unwavering in his adherence to Neapolitan standards. That's been good for him and good for us.
Napoletana Pizzeria
1910 West El Camino Real, Suite C, Mountain View
650-969-4884
Hours: Monday-Thursday, 5-9 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5-10 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5-9 p.m.
Reservations: no
Credit cards: yes
Parking: strip mall lot
Alcohol: beer and wine
Happy hour: no
Corkage: $15
Children: yes
Takeout: yes
Outdoor dining: no
Noise level: moderate
Bathroom cleanliness: very good
Comments
College Terrace
on May 19, 2017 at 12:54 pm
on May 19, 2017 at 12:54 pm
Thank you for the review. I gotta go for the Carbonara !!
Registered user
Mountain View
on May 20, 2017 at 3:36 pm
Registered user
on May 20, 2017 at 3:36 pm
Thanks for the notes. Here is some further information (from experience of a hopelessly addicted regular customer) than newcomers to Napoletana Pizzeria might find useful.
- While good secondary menu items, including spaghetti Carbonara, can be distracting (Napoletana's was about the best version of that dish I've experienced in a restaurant) -- just as a daily chalkboard special can also distract a reviewer from the main focus of Doppio Zero, another VPN-certified Mountain-View pizza restaurant Web Link -- both restaurants are mainly about pizzas. Baked fast, in wood-fired ovens, and made in Naples styles, different in several ways from most US pizzas. If you're interested in these restaurants, it's worth trying the range of pizzas -- unique pleasures are to be found among them. This is especially true at Napoletana, since Costas is an utter perfectionist, obsessive over recreating the true-Naples-pizzeria experience. (He visits there periodically, to calibrate.) Napoletana Pizzeria is the oldest VPN pizzeria nere here (Terun and Doppio Zero later followed its example).
- This review, like Sheila Himmel's earlier one in these pages, Web Link mentioned the True Neapolitan Pizzeria trade group (VPN, Web Link ), which certified Napoletana Pizzeria in 2012 (not 2010 as this article says -- the restaurant opened in 2011). It might be useful to add a little background about Naples pizzas. That's because Naples isn't just "a" pizza style, but "the" original pizza source. Food historians (such as Mariani) point out that until fairly recent times, pizzas were unknown to most of Italy. The pizza was "poor people's food from the slums of Naples... [immigrants to the US] enlarged it and sold it as finger food, in contrast with the pizzas customarily served on plates and eaten with knife and fork in Italy." The pizza became internationally familiar "only after its boom in the US. . .spurring a keen interest in this once-lowly item both in Italy and abroad. . .pizzerias in America outnumbered pizzerias in Italy in the 1950s, and they probably still do."
- As the quotation indicates, unlike in the US, Naples pizzas aren't "finger food" but are made in individual-diner size, served unsliced, on plates, with knife and fork. Local VPN pizzerias accommodate US expectations by slicing the pizzas, but that's optional and has a side effect. The very hot, freshly baked pizzas come together slightly (as a freshly baked lasagne does, after resting for a few minutes); while if the pizza is sliced right from the oven, juicier toppings drip through to the plate. Some unfamiliar diners complained of that at Napoletana, but it's a consequence of immediate slicing, and you can reduce the problem by either asking for the pizza unsliced and cutting it up on the table, or getting it sliced after a few minutes' rest. Napoletana's large contingent of Italian-born regular customers typically orders them unsliced.
- MV-Voice editor Andrea Gemmett once captured a further advantage of this smaller pizza size: "When I was a teenaged exchange student, the most baffling part of my first experience going out for pizza in Italy was the lack of prolonged familial negotiations over which toppings to choose. It wasn't until all the pizzas arrived that I understood. With individual pizzas, everyone got exactly what he or she wanted. I could never figure out why such a sensible idea took so long it make it to American pizzerias." (Quoted with permission.)
College Terrace
on May 28, 2017 at 10:58 pm
on May 28, 2017 at 10:58 pm
Napoletana Pizzeria did not disappoint tonight. I loved the Carbonara , but will certainly have pizza next time. I sat at the tiny bar near the pizza oven where I could see the pizza at all stages of its preparation. Wow. Did it look good. Thanks @Max for the tip about not having it sliced. How did I not know this place about this place? Thank-you Dale.