I was at Cupertino’s yesterday with Valerie, and after I enjoyed one of the finest meatball parm subs in my life (with everything but the cheese made on premises) I had a chance to chat with the owner. He told me he’d been in Virginia now for about a year and a half, so I asked him where he liked to eat a good pizza. He’d eaten pizza from JoJo’s downtown, but his recommendation was for this newish place in the middle-West End: Capriccio’s.

Situated in the old Jersey Mike’s slot (I think there have been a few other places since Jersey Mike’s left) in the T.J. Maxx shopping center off Broad/Tuckernuck, Capriccio’s pizza may be a true rival to any pizza I’ve yet tasted in the R-I-C, and could hold its own among the great pizza of the Northeastern US. Naturally, further research is required (lots of research), but everything about their true Neapolitan-style pie is done right. The sauce, the cheese, the crust, the balance of everything…oh my, it’s delicious. The crust, particularly, the literal and figurative foundation of any good pizza, was second only to my experience in Napoli. It was as crisp as it needed to be, chewy the rest of the way through, and tasty enough to eat on its own. This place is close enough to my office that I may become a frequent lunch patron…

This is probably a good time to make another statement, though. I tried Tarrantino’s a while back (I could have sworn I wrote about it, but I can’t find the post…) when it was starting to receive heavy buzz around town, and I was flabbergasted by how good it was. I talked to the young tattooed fella in the kitchen and he claimed to make the sauce and pizza dough himself. It was truly amazing. So I revisited a few times, but I never saw this guy there again, and each time the pizza got progressively worse. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it just wasn’t good. I fault the fact that it was part of
Tarrant’s Cafe (which is decent on its own, but it’s not a pizzeria) and was really just an add-on in the first place.

Capriccio’s, on the other hand, is a stand-alone Italian food joint that seems mostly to be a pizza parlor. The owners know what’s what, and seem to be involved in the food more intimately. Let’s hope it sticks around for much longer than the six weeks they’ve put in already. I certainly plan to support them with my money and stomach 🙂