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The result is Forno Rosso Pizzeria Napoletana, the wood-fired pizza restaurant Nitti opened in early July along a northwest-side Italian strip probably best known for the Italian deli Riviera. He’s currently in the process of becoming only the third Neapolitan pizza restaurant in the Chicago area to be certified authentic by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, after Spacca Napoli and (here’s a trivia answer sure to stump the foodies in your life) Parkers’ Restaurant & Bar in Downers Grove.
Newly obsessed after his Naples trip, he went around the country sampling authentic Neapolitan pizzerias, and then studied with a pizzaiolo in Naples for three weeks, followed by an apprenticeship in Nevada with that pizzaiolo’s brother, who works for a west-coast chain.
Apart from the justly beloved Riviera, the Italian strip on Harlem Avenue always looks more promising and authentic than it usually turns out to be, and most of the city’s Neapolitan-style pizzerias are closer to the lakefront and downtown. So I asked Nitti why he opened on the northwest edge of the city. “I grew up in this neighborhood, and it’s a very ethnic neighborhood, very eastern European but also very diverse,” he explains. “There’s Neapolitan pizza in Ravenswood, and in Bucktown, and some places that fool around with wood-burning ovens downtown, but nothing between there and the western suburbs. So I figured this would be a good place to put myself in between.”
