Lampo Neapolitan Pizzeria — Restaurant in Charlottesville

This is a very small place. When we arrived after 9 pm on a Saturday night in July it was full but there were two small tables available upon our arrival. We were asked to wait outside with the entrance doors closed, which did not feel very nice, but understandable given that the place was small and they probably needed the space to get the tables ready for us. Just took a few minutes.

We tried the funghi pizza and a special anchovies pizza. We also tried the Brussels sprouts salad and the fried ricotta donuts because of the good reviews.

Out of all the things we tried here, the Zeppole donut dessert was the best thing we had. The Zeppole deserves 5 stars on its own. The Brussels sprouts salad was a little disappointing bc they didn’t match the hype of the reviews, but it was good enough to finish it. I thought it’d be better with less sauce and more cheese, but it’s probably a personal preference. Maybe I’m just not a salad person.

This restaurant definitely did not figure out their optimal time and temperature to cook the pizza. It seemed like the pizza took a long time and they must’ve used lower heat. I actually liked that they didn’t burn their pizza crispy like they tend to do in the NJ and Philly restaurants for neopolitan pizza, but I also agree with other reviewers who said that their pizza here was undercooked. So they need some work on perfecting the appropriate oven temperature and timing. And it would also be better not to have huge crusts, add more topping please.

Another thing that we didn’t expect was the scissor being given with the 12 inch pizza with the expectation of cutting your pizza yourself. You’re charging 18% gratuity automatically and you’re expecting us to cut our own pizza? I’ve never gone to a pizza place in NYC, NJ, or Philly where you don’t get the pizza cut for you in advance or at least asked how you want it to be cut for you.

Plenty of parking when it’s not business hours for the next door building’s employee parking lot next to Lampo (to your left when facing Lampo). But otherwise might be harder to find parking. I only saw 3-4 spots reserved for Lampo customers.

This restaurant has the potential to be 5 stars. Being that so far we’ve found some of the best neopolitan pizza in states, Lampo didn’t come close to being as good. So seeing 4.7 stars here seems like maybe it’s very good for the standard of pizza in this area? It’s pretty ok/good (all pizza was good enough to finish) but it’s definitely not the best compared to other Neopolitan pizza places we’ve tried. We felt that it should be overall...

We were excited to finally try this place — getting our 3-month-old infant and my 80+ year-old parents out for dinner is no small task. Since my parents are vegetarian, pizza is usually the easiest and safest option for everyone.

Unfortunately, the night went downhill fast. From the moment we sat down, we were met with a dismissive, condescending attitude from both the waitress and the owner. They flat-out refused to make a simple veggie pizza. You can remove toppings from their preset pizzas, but you can’t add vegetables to a plain cheese pizza. When we politely asked if they could make an exception, the answer was a curt, inflexible “no.” The waitress also refused to split our bill.

What bothered me most wasn’t just the inflexibility — it was how little they cared. I’ve always rooted for small businesses, and nearly all of my reviews are positive. It takes a lot for me to write a negative one. But the owner and waitress showed no interest whatsoever that we had managed to get three generations of our family together and had chosen their restaurant for the occasion.

After we left, my elderly parents were too tired to go anywhere else, so we ended up eating takeout at home. What should have been a rare and special family night out was completely ruined.

If you have vegetarian family members or loved ones with dietary restrictions, this place will not accommodate you.

More importantly, if you believe customers deserve even basic courtesy and respect, spend your time and money somewhere else. Dining out should feel welcoming and enjoyable, not like you’re being tolerated. There are plenty of restaurants that will work with you, appreciate your business, and treat you with kindness — support them. Don’t reward a place that treats its customers as if they’re...

I want to start off positively by saying the food and drink were very good and exactly what I wanted and expected. My friend and I shared a delicious tomato sandwich on house-made bread. It was really delicious and had the right amount of sauce on it. We each got a tomato vodka martini which was very soft in flavor, but pleasant to drink.

Now onto the negative aspect of the review. I think the service staff could use some additional training on table-side behaviors. Our waitress didn't talk to us about the menu at all (it was pretty tiny for the Tomato Tomato festival next door), which I thought added a coldness to our experience despite her mild mannered demeanor. It was busy, but having a 15 to 30 second chat with a table shouldn't be too much to ask. When we got our sandwich it only came with one plate despite me telling the server we were sharing the one sandwich... Okay, that could be chalked up to someone other than the server bringing us the food. But the runner didn't notice either that there was one plate for two people? One of the guys in the kitchen walked a side plate over and handed it to my friend who was eating over a napkin (which I had to ask for) at this point.

I feel conflicted. The service absolutely needs work, but everyone was very nice who I spoke to. Their biggest issue is not paying attention to what's going on around them, or predicting what the guest will need - two things that were emphasized to me when I was a server at multiple...