Welcome to the Northern Virginia Restaurant Blog.


Restaurant reviews in Tyson's and surrounding area... mostly

Monday, August 31, 2015

The Italian Store - Italian Market with Sandwiches and Pizza - Arlington, VA

Lyon Village Location
3123 Lee Hwy
Arlington, Virginia 22201
Tel: (703) 528-6266

Westover Location
5837 Washington Blvd,
Arlington, Virginia 22205
Tel: (571) 341-1080

If you love New York pizza as much as we do, then this is the place for you. Hands down, The Italian Store's pizza is the closest you will get to real New York pizza in this area by far.  We have tried a few other places, which we also liked, but this is by far our #1 choice.

Side note: As our loyal readers already know, we are from New Jersey (Northern Noo Joisey). Well, one of us was born and raised, the other lived extensively both in New Jersey and New York City. Northern Jersey is considered by many, maybe all, insiders and outsiders alike, to be a New York suburb. Not only do so many people from New Jersey commute daily to their jobs in New York City and so many New Yorkers come to shop in New Jersey (where there is no tax on clothes), but more importantly, the attitudes and outlooks are typically pretty similar across the state border in this particular area. In New York City, folks from New Jersey are known as the Bridge-&-Tunnel Crowd. Like most NY - NJ ex-pats, we are constantly (some may even say annoyingly) comparing the taste and quality of pizza, bagels, and food in general between where we grew up and the rest of the country. The point of this paragraph is to convey to our readers that when we say "New York pizza," it's actually an abbreviation of NY - NJ pizza. Now getting back to the restaurant we are reviewing.....

We first tried this pizza at the Lyon Village location in Arlington about a decade ago, and knew immediately that the owners had to be from NY. You can read their story on their website. Our staple - the Extra Large Cheese Pizza.  We've also gotten it at their second location in the Westover neighborhood in Arlington, but found it to be not as much to our liking as the one at the Lyon Village. The seasoning and crust are consistently different, and we prefer the way they do it at the Lyon Village.

Each slice is yuuuge. Just tap a napkin on the cheese to absorb a few drops of the extra oil, fold the slice in half, and bada bam! You're walking down the street in Noo Yawk!

Incidentally, this is the only pizza that we can both order without requesting any changes on different halves and both enjoy it equally. One of us (Bill) loves extra cheese, but not extra sauce; the other (Elena) loves extra sauce, but not extra cheese. Here, we get no extra anything - you got it, we change nothing - and we are both happy. 

We have gotten a couple subs from them over the years and they have been just as good, but it's the pizza that we crave on average once a month.

P.S. Still no good bagels in Northern Virginia, though.....

 Westover location

 Busy Sunday afternoon

 Display menu (partial)

 Display menu (partial)

 Pick Up Window

 Tons of delicious frozen food to take home (missing the prices in this entire section!)

 Delicious freshly baked cookies to take home (no prices on these, either!)

 Wonderful pastas (missing prices again!)

 There is an amazing slice (actually a whole pie) of HEAVEN in this box!

Love love love love!!!



1 comment:

  1. Good review. Best pizza we have ever had was in Paramus NJ @ La Bella Roma....Until now in Fl. Pizza Time in Saint Augustine is friggin amazing. Now in Fort Pierce Fl we found Loutina's. Not only is their pizza great but they have the BEST stromboli I have has since I was in college in south Jersey from a place called Paoli's. Had a custom made eggplant, spinach, and broccoli....Yum. All these places run by NY replants.

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