Sapore di Napoli
1406 West Belmont Avenue, Chicago IL; Phone773-935-1212
Date of Review: April, 2007; updated May, 2008
Sapore di Napoli is another excellent spot for real Italian, Neapolitan pizza.
This is a very small restaurant with 8 small tables and there are probably never more than 2 people working at one time and 10-12 people eating. It is a simple place with an Italian flare that extends to the person who served us (who also had an Italian accent).
Their menu is pretty basic as all they have are a few appetizers, a few salads, a couple pastas and 12-15 different pizzas to choose from. The pizzas are 12 inches and they are not meant to be shared although splitting one with a salad could suffice as a meal for two people. On my visit, we decided to go right for the pizza. I had the Pomodori e Cipolle pizza which was a pizza with sliced tomatoes, mozzarella, red onion and rosemary. It had just the right combination of ingredients and was just the right size to leave me completely satisfied. My brother in law joined me on this evening and he had the Salsiccia pizza which had Italian sausage, tomato sauce and mozzarella. It was also very good. These pizzas are supposed to be simple but don’t take that as a negative thing as they are excellent. The crust is what really makes the pizza at Sapore di Napoli. It has a perfect consistency which is sweet, but not too sweet, chewy, but not too chewy and just perfect. The ovens behind the corner speak to the wonderful pizza crust as they can cook a pizza in 5-10 minutes and must have been very expensive.
Appetizers on the menu include Caprese, fried calamari and bruschetta. There are 4 different types of salads and they offer pastas including fettucine, spaghetti or penne with homemade marinara or bolognese sauce. On my last visit, we ordered the asparagus salad which featured asparagus along with cherry tomatoes, red onions, gorgonzola and balsamic vinegar. The ingredients were tasty and fresh making for a nice light starter to go with our pizzas.
While we didn’t sample any other menu items, we weren’t about to pass on the gelato. After all, it is hard to pass on a display cabinet of 14 different types of gelato that you’d expect to find on the corner of a street in Italy which stares you in the face when you walk into the restaurant. We both decided to go for the chocolate hazelnut gelato and we were rewarded with a healthy scoop of creamy gelato in an ice cream flute with a wafer cookie for dipping.
While the pizzas are excellent, they are not cheap. Our total bill was $45 which includes tax and tip for 2 pizzas, 2 Italian sodas and 2 scoops of gelato. The restaurant is BYOB (5$ corkage) so that helps to keep the bill reasonable. The pizzas are worth the price but if you expected to walk in and pay $20 to split a pie, you came to the wrong place. The pizzas range from $11-16 in price and the gelato is $5 for a healthy scoop. The salads are in the $6-8 dollar range.
No comments:
Post a Comment