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Pizzeria Locale
Pizzeria Locale started in Boulder in 2011, founded by Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey and executive chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson — the same duo behind the acclaimed Frasca Food and Wine — as a more casual, fast-moving companion to their fine-dining work. The Denver location followed in 2013, opening at 550 Broadway with a concept the founders call "Neighborhood Neapolitan," built from years of culinary travel through Italy layered onto real fine-dining technique. The pizza itself follows traditional Neapolitan proportions and cooking method — a thin, blistered crust cooked quickly at high heat — but the "Neighborhood" half of the name is doing real work: this isn't a formal, white-tablecloth Neapolitan experience, it's built to be fast, approachable, and genuinely suited to a weeknight dinner, even though the ingredient sourcing and technique behind it come from the same team that runs one of Boulder's most respected fine-dining restaurants. That combination of fine-dining pedigree and fast-casual accessibility proved successful enough that Stuckey and Mackinnon-Patterson later partnered with Chipotle to expand a quick-serve version of the concept nationally, even as the original, full-service Denver and Boulder locations have stayed a distinct, separate operation from that larger partnership. For a Denver pizza list, Pizzeria Locale is the essential "fine-dining technique, neighborhood pace" entry — a Neapolitan pizza built by a Master Sommelier and a Frasca-trained chef, serving genuinely serious pizza at a speed and price point built for regular weeknight visits rather than special occasions.
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Cart-Driver
Cart-Driver started small — genuinely small — in a roughly 650-square-foot shipping container in Denver's RiNo neighborhood, founded by Andrew Birkholz in 2014 around wood-fired Neapolitan pizza made with a 200-year-old dough starter sourced from a volcanic island in the Gulf of Naples. That starter is the kind of detail that separates a restaurant chasing an authentic Neapolitan tradition from one simply borrowing the aesthetic, and it's stayed central to Cart-Driver's identity as the restaurant has grown well beyond its original shipping-container footprint. The restaurant expanded into a full Highland/LoHi space in 2019, pairing its wood-fired pies — including a signature margherita the menu calls "the Daisy" — with a broader raw bar and seasonal market-plate menu built around oysters, prosecco on tap, and craft cocktails. That's a meaningfully more polished, drink-forward setting than a typical thin-crust pizzeria, positioning Cart-Driver closer to a full night-out destination than a quick slice stop. Cart-Driver has been credited with helping bring a genuine wave of serious Neapolitan pizza to Denver, and the restaurant has backed that reputation with repeated Westword Best of Denver awards for best pizza — recognition that's held even through a temporary closure of the Highland location for plumbing repairs, after which the restaurant reopened rather than folding the concept. For a Denver pizza list, Cart-Driver is the essential "thin-crust pizza as a full night out" entry — a 200-year-old starter's worth of Neapolitan pizza tradition, paired with oysters and prosecco in a Highland dining room that grew out of a single RiNo shipping container.
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