Brigantessa

The new and much-anticipated pizza joint from the owners and chefs of Le Virtu, one of Philadelphia's best-loved restaurants. A bi-level space, with a bar and some high-top tables by the window (plus the kitchen and the straight-from-Naples oven) on the first floor, and then the main dining area on the second story.

Brigantessa has been pretty mobbed since they opened, but it doesn't feel busy or uncomfortable. The food is very delicious but also very small and very expensive. The spuntini (Italian tapas) are merely a bite or two of food but gor for seven to ten dollars (or more). The pastas, handmade and delicate, are beautiful, but you get about 5 small pieces for eighteen dollars. Individual pizzas are around twenty dollars, and while good and true to the Neapolitan style, they won't have you screaming "oh-my-god-this-is-the-best-pizza-ever".

As for the beer- sixteen taps for you. Ten of them are American crafts from Victory, Great Lakes, Lagunitas, Allagash and what not priced at around six dollars. The four Italian craft draughts (from Del Borgo, Ducato and others) are a whopping eleven dollars a piece. There is also a cider.

All in all, I want to love this place but merely like it for now. I dined solo once and spent 65 dollars. This is not going to be the everyday hanging spot I thought it'd be. But as a once-in-a-blue-moon jawn, it works.