Last updated: January 12, 2021

In the Weeds

Modern pizza, the pizza that all of us know and love, dates to 1889, if certain Neapolitan  legends are to be believed. In its relatively short life, pizza has come to conquer the culinary world. Sure, there are diehard deep dish loyalists, a solid block of Detroit-style square supporters, and legions that swear by the divine supremacy of the foldability of a New York slice, but still, nearly everybody loves pizza.  I’ve seen more Little Caesar’s ads in Mexico City than I have anywhere else. On the beaches of Ipanema and Leblon in Rio, people take a break from sunbathing and order a slice to wash down their caipirinhas. In certain wealthier parts of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, you’re just as likely to see young people enjoying Pizza Hut or Domino’s as those slurping down some pho. In America alone, there’s more than 40,000 pizza restaurants, according to Pizza Today, and that’s just the chains. There’s now more than 2,000 Pizza Hut locations in China, with thousands more planning to open in the coming years. 

With so much pizza in the world, there’s more mediocre or down right bad pizza out there than good pizza, and especially great pizza. When I was growing up, about the best pizza you could hope to get in Charlotte was one of the chains. With the flood of New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians, Michiganders, and New Jerseyans arriving in the city in the last two decades, however, came some great pizza. 

Inizio Pizza Napoletana takes the pie back to its Italian roots, employing a wood-fired oven, the best 00 flour, high quality sea salt, and imported Italian ingredients. Their pies only cook for 90 seconds, but in that short time a culinary miracle occurs and the best pizza in the city comes into being. If you think that’s hyperbole, you haven’t tried their pizza yet. Once you do, you’ll be a convert just like me, swooning at even the merest mention of the name Inizio. 

Take their diavola, my favorite of their pizzas. It isn’t straining under an avalanche of bizarre ingredients or made heavy as lead with too much cheese, meat, and grease. It’s a simple pie made with spicy salami, Calabrian peppers, San Marzano tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella, and pecorino cheese. Like all the pies at Inizio, it comes with a medium-sized cup of warm marinara for dipping your slice in or smothering the entire pie. 

Those Calabrian peppers, in pieces or whole, speckle the pizza and add a mouthful of heat that compliments the spicy salami. The pecorino and mozzarella balance it out, and the thin crust is crispy and charred enough to add an almost umami dimension to the pizza. If you like pan or deep dish, this won’t be what you’re used to, but you also won’t feel like you’ve consumed a wheelbarrow of cement after you’ve finished a few slices. 

The menu at Inizio is divided between pizze tradizionali, pizzas with red sauce, and pizze speciali, pizzas without the red sauce, often referred to as white pizzas. They also have salads you can order to accompany your pizza so you don’t feel bad consuming so many calories.

Besides the diavola, the other red sauce pizzas that really stand out are the margherita (I add pepperoni) and the raffaele. The margherita pizza — which legend says was named after Margherita of Savoy, the Queen of Italy — is as basic as a pizza can get. It’s just some tomato sauce, basil, and mozzarella on pizza dough. That’s it. Inizio adds some garlic and pecorino to elevate the flavor profile, but the beauty of a margherita is it does all a pizza needs to do with the fewest toppings. It shows an allegiance to tradition with  a simplicity that should not be confused with an absence of recognizable flavors. The raffaele balances out its savoriness with the addition of sweet peppers to a pie of sausage, roasted onions, tomato sauce, mozzarella, garlic, and pecorino. One would think that the sweet pepper would be drowned out by the other ingredients, but as I’ve come to expect from Inizio, each part of the slice stands out with each new bite.

The pizze speciali are as good as their red sauce counterparts, offering just as much variety and high-quality ingredients with a more savory flavor profile that allows Inizio to expand their creativity. The pistacchio is a close second to the diavola in my rankings and the best of the white pizzas. Rosemary, sea salt, giant dollops of ricotta, mozzarella, fairly generous amounts of garlic, a pistachio pesto, and chopped pistachios come together on that wonderful, charred crust. Nuts on a pizza might sound like a strange choice, but the earthy, almost vegetal quality of the pistachios goes well with the pungency of the garlic, ricotta, and rosemary. 

The most savory pie at Inizio is a white pizza, the Maria. It’s a lush, indulgent pizza topped with a seasonal mushroom blend, truffle crema, roasted garlic, mozzarella, sea salt, and pecorino. The truffle and mushroom blend are the pinnacle of umami flavor and their earthy wallop would tip lesser pizzas into the realm of inedibility, but the crust and cheeses are so good the pizza doesn’t get lost in fungi flavor. 

Part of me wants a pizza place to go full stereotype: red-and-white checkered tablecloths, Chianti in wicker baskets, lots of gesticulating waiters, accordion players, and pictures of the Pope, Sophia Loren, and Frank Sinatra staring down at me from the walls. You won’t find that at Inizio and that’s fine, but the place does look a shade too industrial for my tastes. It feels cold and sterile, when it should be warm and inviting. 

That’s a small quibble, and despite it, Inizio is one of my favorite restaurants in the city. I’m certainly wishing I had a diavola in front of me as I write this. Clearly, it’s not just me who loves them; even in the midst of a global pandemic that’s closing restaurants left and right, Inizio is expanding, adding a third location near Birkdale over the next several weeks. If pizza really is the world’s favorite food, and I think it’s getting there, the best example you can find in Charlotte is at Inizio Pizza Napoletana.