Lampo

Really yummy. A little pricey and it’s super hard to get a table, but it’s worth it when you do.

Very good pizza and laid back vibe. Best pizza in C-​ville hands down. Ever since my wife and I went to Italy we have been on the search for something that replicates the Italy pizza which American pizzerias have destroyed. Lampo is the closest thing we have found here on C-​vile. The only reason they got 4 stars is due to the wait we had because they only have 23 seats. But don’t get me wrong we are coming back as long as we live in C-​vile.

Seriously the best pizza I’ve ever had and I’ve had pizza from one of the top three pizza places in NYC. Definitely such a good place to take friends or family when they visit!

I really really wanted to like this place. Heard great things about the food, esp the pizza.
The service was friendly and warm. Ambience very nice.
Problems: we were encouraged to order all our food at once — which would be fine except bread, olives, salad and two pizzas came to our tiny table all at the same time. We were led to believe it would take some time («things will come out as they are ready») which we were totally happy about, since we wanted to leisurely eat, drink some wine and just relax. Our food came all at once and our server was like «oh well!» which wasn’t cool.
Further, our pizzas were both sadly uncooked in the middle. Like just not done. Uncooked dough, liquid ingredients. It was pretty pathetic for a place that supposedly has the best pizza in town.
Wine was great. Simple starter of bread and olives were the highlight. Beet salad was unremarkable. Pizzas left much to be desired. Dessert of almond bread pudding was very good, another highlight.
I will try again but come on, Lampo. You don’t get a free pass just because you are popular in cville at the moment.
Everything in this review is honest. I hope it makes it into the so-​called Recommended Reviews despite being negative. I notice several of the reviews that did not make the cut were critical. Don’t shut out criticism. Listen to it so you can maybe improve in the future. I want it to be an awesome place.

It took my wife and I a year but we finally went to Lampo.
What a treat!
This is just great pizza. Salads are also super and the wine list (although limited) has a good range for just about everyone’s taste.
Service was above normal with wait staff attentive and professional. Food is delivered in a timely fashion.
The downside to Lampo is that it is very small space and tight if you want to move around. For example, capacity is only about 22 seats. However, this will change in less then a month. A new addition is being built that will double seating capacity. Hopefully, this doubling of capacity will not adversely affect food quality.
Another way to view Lampo is that it is an alternative to Christian’s Pizza.
Christian’s is more a traditional American pizza; that is, a large pizza with your choice of a variety of toppings. Christian’s is very good.
Lampo pizza is more of a European style. In fact, the owners imported a wood burning oven from Italy to make their pizzas. Add some unique salads, a fairly good wine list, a desert selection and you have Lampo.
Try it… I believe you will like it.
Enjoy!

Ordered the margherita pizza. Their neopolitan crust is thin and crispy. The mozzarella was fresh and the sauce was light and bright. The servers were very friendly and helpful. Great place!!!

My husband and I were having a touristy weekend in Charlottesville, and were pretty hungry for lunch after our visit to Monticello. Not quite sure what we were in the mood for, I took to Unilocal to find a local favorite. In comes Lampo!
As other reviews have mentioned, the restaurant is super (!) tiny. There are about 6 tables — two of which seat about four, the rest could seat two or three diners. They also have a small bar that seats about seven people. All that being said, we were lucky to walk in a little after 12:15 for lunch and snag the last open table. Also good to know, because of the limited seating, they don’t seat your group until the entire party has arrived.
After being seated, I decided on a classic margherita pizza and the meatballs as an appetizer. Both dishes arrived in a timely matter after being ordered, and were simply delicious! The meatballs came piping hot out of the oven, and covered in fresh cheese. The pizza tasted truly fresh, and I loved the slightly charred, chewy bite of the crust.
The service we received was friendly, warm, and attentive. You can tell all of the employees really enjoy working together, as it’s evident in the way they get along.
As I sit here enjoying my leftover pizza as I type, I can 100 percent say I would return to Lampo on my next visit to Charlottesville!

Really awesome pizza, I mean really awesome. The Mushroom one (which I would not normally have ordered) was to die for.
I highly recommend this place for real Italian style pizza. I will be returning.

Woohoo! As good as it gets!
By far the best pizza I’ve ever had! Get the Hellboy special the hot honey is amazing, we bought our own Mike’s hot honey and I put it on everything now

We FINALLY made it to Lampo after many months of wanting to try it. Unfortunately the space is small so every other time there has been a wait but tonight we got there at 5:10 (note ten minutes after opening) and still only got an outside table. There are probably about 7 tables inside plus maybe 6 seats at the bar. It was a nice night so they had another probably 8 tables which was helpful. So obviously it’s popular, and I think it’s with good reason.
So we started with the roasted cauliflower which was awesome. I did expect it to be served hot, but it was still delicious. The beer list is small but decent with of course the locals featured.
For dinner we had 2 pizzas (for 2 adults and a kid) and that was a perfect amount of food. The best part is the softness of the crust… the brick oven really does a perfect job cooking the crust. The funghi pizza was fantastic. The sauce/​cheese was just a tad salty, the mushrooms were perfect cooked and not crisp. I could’ve made myself sick eating way too much of that pizza! Meanwhile. he margherita DOC was only ok. I didn’t think there was enough cheese or basil, so the cheese slid off or you accidentally ate it all in one bite, only to be left with a light tomato sauce on the pizza. When you happened to get a trifecta bite it was good, but I only got one of those in 2 pieces.
We’ll definitely go back (I was eyeing the prosciutto pizza!) but I don’t think I’ll be getting the Margherita DOC.

This is definitely a Charlottesville must-​try. The interior is so warm and inviting, however beware: seating is very minimal. There were 2 tables that seat 4, one table that seats 3, and 2 tables that seat 2 I think, then you have the bar, which probably seated about 10 people max, We arrived around 5:15, 15 minutes after their dinner opening, and got the last table there. We overheard at some point there was a 2.5 hour wait! Either come early, but be prepared to come, add your name to the wait list, leave and come back.
The service was great, the food comes out tapas style so whatever was finished first comes out. We started out with the sauteed escarole (for 4 $) and the meatball appetizer (can’t remember the name. Those were VERY good. The escarole is some type of green, but it tastes like lettuce but not quite that soggy. The meatballs you could tell were freshly made, it had that meaty, earthy, taste to it. We ordered the Hellboy and a Margherita. The Margherita is rather plain, we didn’t like or love it, and there was most certainly a very small amount of basil on top and no fresh tomatoes. You’re best bet is to try the other specialty pizzas. The Hellboy is salty, sweet, and spicy all at the same time, and it was amazing! It all came to about 14 $ per person, and we were too stuffed for dessert! But we most definitely will be coming back to try some more pizzas!

Dude. The pizza crust right out of the oven is so soft and amazing it’s like a heaven you never even thought existed. If you wanna know what pizza in Italy is– this is «as good as it gets»
I was also delighted by the price of everything is manageable. The apps are small so you could skip those. But they lend a certain charm if you want to go all out.
My tip would be to start with a beer at champion brewery — right on the other side of the road!

Lampo lives up to its hype! I’ve been meaning to eat here for a long time, and I regret not trying it sooner.
The pizzas are great! I especially love how the crust is charred and chewy. It is also very thin (basically a flatbread), but still delicious. I found it funny that they gave us scissors, but it’s probably a lot more effective than using a knife or pizza cutter anyways. We ordered the prosciutto and the funghi (my favorite of the two) — both very solid choices!
They have a nice selection for small (emphasis on the small) plates as well — from salads to cheeses to olives as well as seasonal specials. We ordered the meatballs to start and they were pretty good! We also had the pork belly, which was $ 10 for just a piece but WORTH IT. The skin was crispy and not too fatty while meat was very tender.
Everything we had was on the saltier side, but still very yummy. The prices also aren’t too bad for an Italian restaurant. With two starters and two pizzas, we ended up spending ~$ 14 each.
Lastly, there is very limited seating, so I wouldn’t at all recommend coming with a large group.
Lampo is definitely somewhere I will be coming back to whenever I visit Charlottesville!

These guys made the jump to light speed! Great meats and cheeses as well as best pizza around.

Great little spot. There are definitely limited seats, but it was a warm night out and we were fortunate enough to sit outside on the patio. I would have gave 5 stars, but the waitress seemed to be overworked and forgot to take our entrée order for some time and didn’t check up on us when I desperately needed extra napkins.
So on to the food:
For appetizers we got the brussel sprout salad, the escarole on special and the olive plate. The brussel sprouts and escarole were excellent! I definitely enjoyed the combination of flavors. The olive plate was good, but pretty standard.
For the pizzas, we got the Hellboy and Diavola. In my opinion, the Hellboy is too sweet (there is a spicy honey sauce), but maybe other people prefer that? My preference is more of a savory pizza, but the flavors were still good. I definitely enjoyed the Diavola because of the homemade sausage. I did notice that the bottom of the dough was a little soggier than I’m used to, but maybe that’s what they were going for? Despite the difficulty eating a softer pizza, it was still very tasty.

Loved it! I didn’t know what to expect from Lampo. I feel like when you hear an «authentic Italian/​pizza place» is opening in town you take it with a grain of salt because it can be done so poorly. But Lampo does it so right. My husband and I decided to go for a late dinner on a Saturday night. We were seated right away at a cozy table near the front. Despite being late night the service was great. Our waitress walked us through the menu and how to order and recommended some wonderful drinks. We started with the prosciutto and bread, and my husband had the duck liver. Both were delicious. We shared a margherita pizza which was bigger than I thought it would be. The sauce was flavorful and there was just enough cheese. And the crust was amazing! It comes uncut and you get a pizza scissor to cut it with (kind of fun). We didn’t have room for dessert that night but we’ve been talking about our meal there ever since, so we will definitely be back!

Lampo has great food at reasonable prices with fare that is different from what you can find in Charlottesville. They lose a star for being almost impossible to eat at, with ~20 seats in the whole place and no bar area to stand and wait. Its simply too small, but maybe that’s what they were going for.
Opened by the former crew at Tavola, pretty much every hot dish is cooked in their giant wood burning oven. The pizza’s are Neapolitan-​style, cooked at high heat for a very short amount of time, resulting in a slightly burnt, yet slightly undercooked/​chewy dough. I love it, but its different.
I’ve eaten here multiple times now, and its always been great. I have never tried eating here for dinner, coming here for lunch is much more reasonable from a waiting perspective. Personal favorites are the mushroom pizza, porchetta sandwich, beet salad, and meatballs (either alone or on a pizza). But overall, everything is good so you won’t go wrong.
Just don’t show up on a weekend evening expecting to eat anytime soon!

Everything was spot on. Excellent quality which is hard to come by in Cville. Most places are hype here and this place is the real deal. Too good for Cville if we are being honest.
The food came out so quickly, the most organized and chill kitchen atmosphere, spotless clean. Awesome guy working the bar. Great vibes
The food was incredible. Their menu has the best flavor fusions and doesn’t overcompensate because it is fabulous on its own by going back to the basics of cooking and using the best quality produce. So many awful places to eat in Cville, this place is number one out of all the cafes, coffee shops, eateries. They nailed it. The food and aesthetic. Standing ovation necessary.

Ever since Lampo opened, I kept hearing rumors of its greatness, so naturally, I had to try it. If you’d like to dine there during normal hours, I recommend going and putting your name in and then having a drink at a nearby establishment on the mall. The place is super tiny, and there really isn’t space to wait there – besides, you’ll be waiting for a long time.
I was overjoyed [and STARVING] when we checked back, and they were able to seat us right away. I have recently developed an obsession with farro, so we started with the straciatella. It is under the insalate part of the menu, but it doesn’t come with any type of greens. It is a super flavorful dish with great texture and depth from the crunchy farro, soft buffalo mozzarella, crunchy walnuts and sweet pomegranate seeds. We also ordered the marinated olives and a board with soppressata Toscana, aged provolone, percorino sardo, and speck – all great choices! After all of the starters, I had plenty of room for the pizza we ordered. The hellboy was on special, and it was out of this world. It had very spicy meat and honey on top. It was one of the most unique combinations of pizza I have ever had. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I would definitely order it again if it was offered.
The server came around to ask if we wanted to see a dessert menu. I don’t know why, but I still was pretty hungry, so instead we ordered another pizza. She assured us that it had been done before, but I couldn’t help but feel a little bit glutinous. This time around, we went with the prosciutto. It had a white sauce and came topped with arugula. It was good, but the Hellboy was definitely my favorite.
So, I’d like to give reasoning for the four instead of five stars. The meal was amazing, seriously, the food here is excellent, no complaints there. There are a few changes that I think would make the place even better – take reservations, maybe not every table, but at least take some. It would make the experience more enjoyable. Also, I was not full after ordering several dishes, maybe I just have a huge appetite, but but I think we could have been guided better by the server and ordered another pizza from the start.

Took a recommendation from a local to check out this hot restaurant, and I’m so glad I did! Specializing in Neapolitan pizza, Lampo is putting out some darn good pizza.
The space is very small and I was warned it gets packed so you’re best coming in later in the evening. I had no problem scoring a table and we were immediately greeted by our friendly waitress. There was a menu of specials for the day and the regular menu on the table. They serve everything tapas style and plates will come out as they are made. There was no doubt I was trying a pizza but I couldn’t take my eyes off the kale salad special. The kale salad was different then any I’ve had before since the kale was shredded. I like the idea of shredding kale makes it very easy to eat. The kale salad was topped with golden raisins, ricotta salata, and fried parsnips. My only complaint was it was so small and so tasty and I just wanted more! Next time I would definitely order my own salad no sharing for this girl.
The mushroom pizza was amazing. The pizza came out of the wood fired oven piping hot in a matter of minutes. They serve the pizza uncut with shears to cut each slice. I absolutely loved all the ingredients in this pizza it was like a white pizza topped with amazing wild mushrooms, no red sauce on this pie.
I highly recommend walking off the downtown mall a few blocks and checking out Lampo. They also have a great cocktail and wine list. Lampo might be small but they are doing some big things with their tasty food.