Antonio Matarazzo and chef Matteo Venini may have cut their teeth on high-end Italian cuisine in D.C., but when they joined forces to open Stellina Pizzeria, they wanted it centered on Italian street food—pizza, sandwiches, fried seafood and more.
“D.C. was missing a fast-casual Italian restaurant,” says Matarazzo, who hails from Avellini, Italy, an area between Naples and the Amalfi Coast. “You know in D.C. there’s like a lot of taco places, there are a lot of hamburgers, not really Italian street food, Italian fast-casual.”
Stellina Pizzeria, a project seven months in the making, opened Tuesday morning in the gentrifying Union Market District in Northeast D.C. The restaurant, named after Matarazzo’s 3-year-old daughter, means “little star” in Italian.
The bright and airy pizzeria operates from 2,000 square feet on ground floor of The Edison, a luxury apartment building. The building’s other tenants include Trader Joe’s and local Israeli fast-casual concept Shouk.
Matarazzo and Venini have been friends for 11 years. Most recently, they worked together as managing partner and executive chef respectively at Lupo Verde, Lupo Verde Osteria, and Lupo Marino—three Italian restaurants offering multi-course menus.
Stellina highlights street food from Italy’s southern coast, with a roster of neo-Neapolitan pizzas, paper cones (“cuoppos”) stuffed with fried seafood and veggies, and panini sandwiches on pizza dough.
The first part of the menu—the appetizers and fritti—is inspired by the food people eat as they walk around Naples, Venini says. He’s channeling that vibe with street food that includes fried artichokes with herb mayonnaise, Sicilian rice balls with meat, ragu and mozzarella, and cuoppos with calamari, shrimp, baby anchovy, and potato chips.
“Union Market people can stop by, get something, and walk around on Sunday, stuff like that,” says Venini, who is from Lake Como in Northern Italy. “They don’t have to necessarily be sitting down to eat.”
The restaurant specializes in 10-inch neo-Neapolitan pizzas. While places like Menomale, Il Canale, and 2 Amys serve up thin, crispy Neapolitan pizza certified by the international Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, neo-Neapolitan pizza uses an adapted baking process. Bakers use a high-hydration dough that goes through a 48-hour double fermenting process, resulting in a light, moist crust.
The pizzas include three classics—Margherita, Napoli and All’Ortolana— a few others that Venini says are more fun and interesting. His favorite is the $13 Cacio & Pepe, made with buffalo mozzarella, Pecorino Romano cheese, Cacio di Roma cheese, and toasted black pepper that Venini toasts and crushes by hand to keep it flavorful.
Meanwhile, the goal with the sandwiches is to switch up the status quo by putting a main course between two pieces of homemade bread.
“Usually if you think about Italian sandwiches, it’s always prosciutto, mozzarella or some sort of cold cuts and cheese,” Venini says. “So we do a different selection.”
Venini’s favorite sandwich is his $14 porchetta & funghi: house-made pork, salsa verde and crispy mushrooms. It takes him three days to cure the pork belly, a few hours to butcher it, and another 36 hours to cook it.
If street food isn’t your jam, the pizzeria offers three types of salad and pasta.
For the cocktail menu, the duo turned to amaro maker and fellow Italian Francesco Amodeo, founder of Don Ciccio & Figli, which hopes to open its new headquarters and bar in Ivy City at the end of the month.
For Stellina’s inaugural cocktail menu, Amodeo—who worked with the owners at the Lupo Verde trio of restaurants—says he kept things simple and created $10 drinks that go well with pizza.
But the cocktail that’s most important to the three men is the “Totò,” named after the famous Italian comic actor from the 1950s and 1960s. In Amodeo’s view, Totò was a refreshing comedian for that era, so he created a drink to capture that feeling. It’s made with vodka, mandarin, lemon juice, Cocchi Americano, and basil.
“It’s more a refreshing palate cleanser style of cocktail,” Amodeo says. “Let’s say you have something fried. It helps to clean your palate.”
The pizzeria’s aesthetic combines tradition with a modern twist. For example, a large painting in the back shows the late Totò donning a modern Dolce & Gabbana jacket. Yellow, green, and blue accents in the art and tiles are a nod to the southern Italian coastline. Red and white accents throughout the restaurant represent the colors you’ll typically find at pizzerias in Naples, Matarazzo says.
There’s also a nod to the men’s family ties—there are blown up photos of Venini’s father and son, and of Matarazzo’s parents and twins.
Right now, the restaurant seats 50 in the main dining room and eight at the bar. The co-owners applied for a permit last week to offer patio seating—if approved, they’ll seat an additional 30 people.
Stellina Pizzeria is located at 399 Morse St. NE. Open weekdays 10:30 a.m.–10:30 p.m.; weekends 10:30 a.m.–11 p.m.
