Better Than Expected for Florida
Napoli on the Bay sells NY style pies in southwest Florida
Welcome to Pizza Tasting Chronicles, my take on the pizza review. I eat a lot of pizza. I have a lot of opinions about pizza. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My expectations are pretty low when it comes to pizza farther than 100 miles 50 miles from Brooklyn. But that doesn't mean I won't eat the pizza.
As it happened, we were on spring break in southwest Florida and my in-laws decided to order pizza for dinner. They're also originally from New Jersey, and have a good sense of where to get pizza even in this relatively pizza-scarce environment.
Napoli On the Bay is a local chain with about 8 locations scattered along the Route 41 corridor from Marco Island to Bonita Springs. The first location opened almost forty years ago in Naples, though that exact spot has since closed. The family-run chain is led by Telni “Tony” Brito, who has overseen the growth, including expanding in a central commissary kitchen to service the restaurants.
We gave the chain an unfair advantage by ordering whole pies rather than slices.
The regular slice is better than I expected, especially by comparison to the many midwestern chains in the area hawking cracker-thin pizza. But this just barely passes as New York-style. The crust isn't bad, a bit tougher, crispier than I want typically on a slice. It can fold, but has more heft to it than I really want.
What I really questioned on this slice is the sauce. The sauce has all the wrong flavor about it, and the ratio to the cheese seems incorrect. There wasn't anything wrong with the cheese.
What was surprisingly good was the white and spinach pie. This pizza was absolutely delicious. There was a lot of garlic flavor here, but the spinach was laid on thick and the garlic helped cut the iron flavor in the spinach.
The shop also has traditional Italian American heroes. We had chicken parm and eggplant parm. These were both good enough to compete with the some of the best equivalents up north, but again, the flavor of the sauce was lacking something.
Overall, I would absolutely have a white spinach pie from Napoli on the Bay Again.
Napoli on the Bay
Multiple Locations
Naples, Florida