The day is Friday, October 30th, my birthday. I’m accompanied by my girlfriend and four of my friends as we walk between a bridal store on the left and a custom picture frame store on the right. As we enter this unconventional strip mall-esque area through a gate, we are immediately faced with Bella Napoli: My favorite restaurant in Nashville. I wouldn’t consider dining at your favorite restaurant on your birthday abnormal by any means as I’m sure the large populus feels a sort of comfort from doing so; however, there’s a different level of satisfaction for me when eating here. Now I don’t have a special memory tied or any one reason as to why I love eating there, but the answer is that it simply checks all of the boxes for me as the ideal restaurant. A Neapolitan pizzeria with a wide range of other Italian dishes is a huge plus for me as is, but the ambiance, the food, the service all culminates into what I consider the standard and what I compare other restaurants to.
When you walk into Bella Napoli you feel right at home. I’ve eaten there enough times to count on two hands but every time without fail it feels like walking into my childhood home. The wooden lined walls and somewhat dim lighting while walking past the kitchen give a cozy feeling. For this occasion, though we ate in the outdoor section. Around 11 tables are neatly lined against the restaurant and against one of the buildings neighboring it, making an alley way and another way to walk there off the street. Lights are strung up zigzagging down the alley way for even more aesthetic charm. We had a reservation for 5pm which isn’t necessary for the time of day, but historically for me the crowd picks up around 5:30pm-6pm so having a reservation for later should be considered. I feel almost a personal connection to here like that of Giri Nathan in his I Love How Much Ugly Baby Hated Me article.
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For such an occasion we could only have the highest quality server, so my friend, and roommate Josh served us. The service there will always be A1, however Josh has been working there for roughly three and a half years, so he knows his way around the menu. I’m a creature of habit when eating there, so I ordered a couple of amaretto sours. Normally my go-to dish is the Penne Alla Vodka which includes penne noodles, a cream-tomato vodka sauce, pancetta, parmesan and topped with bacon and burrata, but the unfortunate news I found out after arriving there was that the dish was removed from the menu. Thankfully via Josh and my friend Carter (Carter works at Bella Napoli alongside Josh but unlike him, Carter was eating with us), they recommended I get the Casarecce Alla Vodka which essentially replaced my go-to dish if the name wasn’t a dead giveaway. If you’re like me and you haven’t heard of or seen casarecce noodles, imagine each noodle s-shaped on one end and inverting on the other making a uniquely twisted form. Base aside though, it tasted near identically to the aforementioned Penne Alla Vodka. I felt like Remy from Ratatouille when he simultaneously took a bite of the strawberry and cheese. Fireworks. Just as both Josh & Carter said about both dishes, “They taste basically the same.”
A good comparison to Bella Napoli would be Maggiano’s, ironically, they’re only eight minutes from each other as well. The atmosphere, the food, the service are all executed similarly to one another, outside of Maggiano’s being two stories, they’re almost like long lost siblings. Maggiano’s is more known however as I have yet to meet someone who has been to Bella Napoli, let alone heard of it. So why do I prefer Bella over Maggiano’s? Well the nostalgic feeling is a huge plus, but it coincides with the bill afterwards being less at Bella Napoli than at Maggiano’s, even if not by a considerable amount. Also Bella has Crema di Limoncello which is some of the smoothest, best tasting liqueur you can take shots of.
As I’m finishing my light, spongy slice of limoncello cake, and trying my friend’s slice of cheesecake, a small feeling of sadness comes and goes as I want to eat more, but I’m full and financially I shouldn’t. All tables outside are filled at this point as the sun has set, allowing the lights strung up to power on. We pay our bills and say goodbye to Josh as he closed that night, then two of my friends head out to a sports bar to watch a football game, leaving me, my girlfriend and one of my friends to be the only ones heading back.
