Home > Osaka Pizza > Atarizza Pizza in Nishi-ku, Osaka [CLOSED?!]

Atarizza Pizza in Nishi-ku, Osaka [CLOSED?!]

Staff Rating:

Awaza Station or Hommachi Station

3 Chome-4-1 Itachibori, Nishi Ward

[see on the map]

[*** THIS LOCATION MAY BE CLOSED?! ***]

We are out here, all on the street, night after night, on the quest to find the best pizza in Osaka. In this post we bring you an inside-look at a Neapolitan style pizza restaurant, Atarizza Pizza, in Nishi-ku Osaka.

Getting right to the point: Nishi-ku’s Atarizza pizza is a craft pizza, it’s better than average, the ingredients are high quality. Personally, there are other places I’d rather have pizza, but this is a respectable shop. I’ll offer some alternatives that I like better below.

The Atarizza pizza shop in Nishi-ku is on a quiet back street. The feeling is “mature date bar” vibe. It’s a little quiet, a little expensive, tasty, but not overly fun. More like a wine bar, less like a pizzeria.

Let’s get to the pizza:

If that looks like a tasty pizza to you, you are correct. It is. That was the ham and tomato pizza. No sauce, it’s a cheese-base pizza. The ham was very good quality, you could really taste the flavor. Atarizza’s crust was solid. It’s good pizza; not fantastic, but very good.

The seating is one, big “L-shaped” counter, with the kitchen in the center. You can watch the pizzas being constructed, which I like to do.

Many of the Naples-style pizza places have the tradition domed-oven. Not all are wood-fired, but the oven at Atarizza in Osaka is fueled by real wood. If you look close at our pictures, you can see an axe behind the boxes of wood.

For my personal taste (at this stage of my progress toward becoming an connoisseur of pizza), I do like tradition, there is something cool about it, but I don’t know that the wood is really what makes a pizza delicious.

And this gets to the point of why I’m not particularly excited about Atarizza – or any of the dozens of this kind of pizza place in Osaka and beyond; they are all trying to be the same. It’s a copy of something. And to be honest, when it comes to great tasting pizza, or better pizza experiences, there are better options than “another Napoletana Margarita pizza.” I don’t know why the Japanese are so dedicated to be “Napoletana Pizza Restaurant #161,282” – but they seem to be.

The subject of “creativity in Japan” is an interesting topic. If you live here, you can see so many examples of brilliant creative spin, in the bigger picture and in the smaller details. But the “me too” repetition of these Neapolitan-style pizza shops in Japan is one example of copying that shows that quality execution is a good thing, but can leave you in the “not worth mentioning” category if that is all you are able to do.

All the parts are there. And they done well. And I have seen and done this, 100 times. So one more copy of a Napoletana pizza is rather forgettable. Eating pizza all the time is great. I love it. I can’t wait for my next Osaka pizza experience. But… if it’s gonna be another Naples rehash – it’s really hard to matter, if you’re playing in that category.

For an interesting comparison: Atarizza in Nishi-ku is significantly better than Pizzeria da Tigre. Da Tigre hypes itself with some association to the Michelin Guide, but they make a disappointingly-flat pizza (and the experience is sub-par as well). While Atarizza makes the same style, their pizza is much, much better.

However, the same style at Critter’s Pizza, in my arrogant opinion, is better yet. Critter’s makes my favorite Napoletana pizza in Osaka.

And then, to steer us back to taste and experience – which to me is much more important than “style,” – we recently had the “Spice Curry” Detroit Pizza at Craft Beer & Pizza Imazato, and everything about that place is more fun, and tastes better too. If you want quiet, reserved, “sleepy” pizza, Atarizza might be for you. For me, I’ll take Matt’s Detroit pizza every single time. Better experience, all around.

I gave a slice at Atarizza my classic “pizza test:” Can you pick it up, and eat it? And the answer was the same as for most Napaletana pizza – barely. This one was relying on the fold to keep it together.

“Napoli style so crust a bit floppy…”
— dLFCynwa (from Reddit)

That quote is about Regalo Pizza in Fukushima, but the point is the same.

Closing comment here – as another note in the documentation of unique aspects of pizza culture in Japan: Atarizza makes a “mayonaise-based” pizza. We got to watch him taking big scoops of mayo out of a jar, and smearing it on pizza dough…

Atarizza is not the only place to put mayo on a pizza. To be fair, the Japanese like to put mayonaise on almost everything. But for my taste, if you’re going to be creative, mayo is not the place to start.

While we were there, we stopped to shoot a picture of their sign that reads: “500° C, 90 sec.” It is fascinating that Naples style pizza cooks in a minute or two. 500° C is over 900° F; that’s hot. And if you watch this kind of pizza being made, it really is that quick.

If you know that there are pizzas that sit in an oven for as long as 20 minutes, the difference is educational.