Is There a New Pizzeria on US 41 in Naples? What to Know About La Pizzeria

Yes. La Pizzeria opened on September 1, 2026, at 304 Ninth Street North in Naples, in the Trinity Plaza retail strip at the southeast corner of Tamiami Trail North (US 41) and Third Avenue North. It is open for dinner from 4pm to 1am Tuesday through Sunday and closed Mondays. The reporting comes from restaurant columnist Tim Aten, whose coverage of Southwest Florida dining runs on WINK News and Gulfshore Business.

It sits in the same unit strip as, and right next door to, Mercato Italiano, the Italian market and eatery at 306 Ninth Street North that brothers Luca and Valerio Di Falco opened five years earlier, in June 2021. La Pizzeria is a second, separate business rather than an expansion of the market's existing menu.

I am Kris Asquith, Broker Associate at Premiere Plus Realty, and I sell across nine Southwest Florida markets including Naples.

It is run by the same family that has already spent five years building a following one door down. Valerio Di Falco, who is Sicilian-born, runs the kitchen at both businesses, and his brother Luca is a longtime restaurateur on Fifth Avenue South and the general manager of Acqua Bistecca, the Estero Bay restaurant at Saltleaf in Bonita Springs.

Luca has said that where he comes from in Sicily the pizza is a different, heavier style, and that he fell for Neapolitan-style pizza specifically because it is lighter. That preference is the whole premise of the new restaurant: rather than adding a heavier square-cut pizza to Mercato Italiano's counter, the brothers built a separate late-hours restaurant next door built entirely around the Neapolitan style Luca prefers.

Strictly Neapolitan-style at La Pizzeria: fifteen pies split between Pizze Rosse, made with red sauce, and Pizze Bianche, made with white sauce, plus three gourmet specialty pizzas and two calzone options. Valerio's own favorite is the Alessandro, a white pizza named after his son, built on pistachio pesto, fior di latte, mushrooms and mortadella.

Mercato Italiano next door keeps its own identity rather than folding into the new menu. It continues serving breakfast and lunch, imported Italian goods, espresso drinks and its own Sicilian-style pizza, cut in the thick squares that are a different tradition from anything La Pizzeria serves. The brothers have described them as separate businesses on purpose, with La Pizzeria picking up where the market's daytime hours leave off and running into the night.

More than a single new restaurant suggests on its own. The Trinity Plaza strip on the corner of US 41 North and Third Avenue North already carries Grouper & Chips, Lavender Cafe & Bistro, Opa Greek Restaurant and Vito's Famous Cheesesteaks, alongside Mercato Italiano. A new restaurant opening there is not a single tenant testing an empty storefront; it is an existing local family, already five years into one lease in that same strip, choosing to take on a second one next door.

That is a different signal from an outside chain arriving cold. It reads as a family that already knows what that block does on a normal Tuesday night choosing to bet more of their own money on it, which says something about that stretch of US 41 that a single opening rarely does on its own.

Nobody can honestly put a number on what one new restaurant does to nearby property values, and be skeptical of anyone who tells you otherwise. What is fair to say is narrower and still useful: this is one more operating business, run by people already established in the neighborhood, in a corridor of central Naples that already had a working mix of independent restaurants before this one opened.

That is a different kind of evidence than an announced project still waiting on permits. A buyer weighing that part of Naples, whether looking at Naples condos along the US 41 corridor or comparing it against other Naples neighborhoods generally, is better served by what is actually open and drawing a line at closing time than by what a developer says is coming. The Naples real estate page covers what else moves value across the wider market.

A restaurant opening is one data point about a neighborhood's health, not a substitute for the numbers that actually decide what a property costs to buy and keep: what a home has sold for on that specific street, what a condo association holds in reserves, and what an inspection turns up. The home buying process walks through where each of those gets checked, in order, before you are under contract.

If you are weighing a property near this stretch of Naples, or anywhere else across the nine markets I cover, get in touch or call (239) 300-1427 for a straight read on a specific address rather than the neighborhood in general.