Pupatella Neopolitan Pizza

The dough stays close to Naples

The oven takes each pizza for 90 seconds at 900°F, and Enzo Algarme, Executive Chef at Pupatella Neopolitan Pizza in Arlington, keeps the method tied to the city he came from. Algarme founded Pupatella in 2007 after moving from Naples to the United States and finding that the pizza he wanted was not being made around him. The first form was a food cart in Ballston; the brick-and-mortar followed in 2010 at 5104 Wilson Blvd, giving the work a fixed bench and a fire that could hold the standard every day.

His training at George Mason University sits outside the usual kitchen lineage, but the discipline here comes from a narrower inheritance: Neapolitan dough, Naples ingredients, and the rules of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. Algarme has described the work without ornament: “Our pizza is very traditional Neapolitan pizza, done the same way as it first was 150 years ago.” At this address, that sentence is not a theme. It is the operating method.

A 90-second bake and a soft center

The program begins with dough made from 00 Italian flour, sea salt, fresh yeast, and water. San Marzano tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella carry the same insistence on origin, and the oven, built from Mount Vesuvius brick, gives the crust its blister, its char, and its softer center. The bake is short enough that the maker has little room for correction. The pie goes in, turns, and comes back out before the room has moved on.

The Margherita is the clearest read of that method: tomato, buffalo mozzarella, basil, heat. Filetti, Meatball, Sausage, and Burrata extend the same base rather than pulling it away from Naples. AVPN certification gives the house its formal guardrails, including dough, tomato, mozzarella, oven, and dimensions, and at the pass, a pale round becomes a blistered one in less than two minutes.

The counter and the fire

The Ballston original still reads like a pizzeria before it reads like a brand. The room is modest, efficient, and built around the counter; Algarme has said it plainly, “Customers order at the counter, and the food is brought to the table.” That simple format keeps the attention on the oven rather than ceremony or performance. Plates move quickly from kitchen to table. The crowd supplies the noise and the room’s energy.

There is wine and beer, but the cellar does not try to become the subject. The room works best when the pizza is close to the table and the crust still carries heat from the fire. In a place that began as a cart and settled into a strip-mall address, the craft remains visible in the Margherita at 5104 Wilson Blvd.