This pizzeria makes fans for life. Meet the winner of our Triangle Pizza Bracket.
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Belly busters: Your bracket results for the Triangle’s best food
It’s that time of year when you’re probably busy filling out your tournament bracket. Luckily, you got ahead of the game by voting in our recent brackets for the Triangle’s best pizzeria. And coffee shop. And burger joint. And the best wings. What should we feast on next?
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Above the door leading into the Triangle’s favorite pizza shop, a promise is scrawled in glowing purple neon: Good Vibes Only.
Vibes, the current word for all that is cool and ephemeral and inexplicably perfect, are in abundance at Frank’s Pizza & Italian Restaurant in Raleigh, the winner of the News & Observer’s Triangle Pizza Bracket.
Voters named Frank’s Pizza the top pizzeria in the area, with the 46-year-old shop collecting 5,102 votes to top Trophy Brewing & Pizza’s 2,732 in the finals.
Owned by Nasser and Paula Lachichi, Frank’s outlasted 15 formidable pizzerias, including artisan Neapolitan-style shops, trendy newcomers and other neighborhood favorites from across the Triangle. It prevailed with passion and nostalgia, standing as a Raleigh icon for generations.
“We’re just a little mom and pop shop,” Paula said. “Others are much more well known. It’s an honor.”
You can call him Frank (but it’s not his name)
Perhaps the first thing to know about Frank’s Pizza is there is no Frank, at least not anymore. Before he opened Piccola Italia in the now-named Village District in Raleigh, Frank Amato started a New York style pizzeria in 1976, giving it his name.
Around that time, Nasser Lachichi, a young N.C. State University engineering student from Algeria, worked at Frank’s and Piccola.
When he ran out of money for school he took a different path and worked full time in the restaurants. In 1986, Amato sold him Frank’s Pizza on New Bern Avenue.
Nothing much changed, not even the name.
“Ninety percent of the people who come in call Nasser ‘Frank,’” Paula said.
The Frank’s Pizza of today and the last 36 years is based on the original recipes, the dough, the sauces, even the same supplier. But the flavors and techniques have evolved.
Here and there, the Lachichis added their own touches, answering the call for chicken wings on the menu, including Korean and buffalo sauces. And Nasser added homemade soups, including specials from North Africa.
Over the years, Nasser has embraced “Frank” as a kind of pizza-centric alter ego, a name bigger than him and maybe even bigger than the restaurant, that diners know as the place with the special pizza.
“I never wanted to change the name, everyone knows it as Frank’s Pizza,” Nasser said. “It’s not about recognition. I take a lot of pride in what I do, I’m making the food that I love. It’s my place.”
‘I knew I was in the right place’
Pizza is a lifelong love, formed early as the thrill of an all-cheese slice, the centerpiece of birthday parties and weeknight rituals, a simple perfect thing that contains multitudes.
Life often carries you away from home, sometimes changing where the idea of home begins and ends. In Frank’s, Paula believes many people found something familiar, maybe the best pizza in all the towns they loved and left behind.
“A guy came in one day who was originally from Pennsylvania,” Paula said. “He had moved for years between states for jobs and couldn’t find good pizza. He ordered three slices and said he just sent his wife a picture of the garlic shaker. He said, ‘When I saw you had garlic on the table I knew I was in the right place.’ I didn’t know that wasn’t a thing.”
About six years ago, the original Frank’s Pizza sign was literally falling off the building. When Nasser and Paula replaced it they also started renovating the dining room. Fans freaked out, fearing if anything were changed, perhaps the spell could be broken.
“They said, ‘What are you doing? You can’t change anything,’” Paula said. “We’ve been found by people who say ‘This is home,’ or that it makes them feel like they’re back home in New York or somewhere.”
New tables were brought in, but that’s it. Most of everything else was left in place.
‘Not hipster, it looks like an old pizzeria’
“Our restaurant is not hipster, it looks like an old pizzeria,” Paula said. “That’s what people like.”
Paula was born in the old Rex hospital in Raleigh and grew up in Johnston County. Nasser is from Algeria and immigrated to the U.S. to study at N.C. State. They met as students in the N.C. State library and were married in 1985.
In Algeria, Nasser said the pizza was thick Sicilian-style slices, fluffy and airy but without cheese. They were baked in homes and sold as street food, topped with slices of tomato and black olives and, if he was lucky, anchovies.
“Sometimes there would be bits of dirt, but that’s all we knew and it was wonderful,” Nasser said. “When I came to the states and saw a whole restaurant that sells nothing but pizza, it was weird.”
Paula’s first pizza love was a common one.
“Being from JoCo, I grew up on Pizza Hut,” she said.
The dough at Frank’s is more of a ritual than a recipe. Nasser would give you the recipe if he could, if it existed, but he said it’s something that must be felt, not measured out in tablespoons. The countless balls of daily dough have to keep a bounce, he said, some elasticity, or a promising pizza will deflate into a cracker.
“It’s all by feel,” he said. “When it’s mixed up, I grab a handful of it and feel it and know if it needs more water or flour. When you shape it you have to leave some air in it. You can’t mash it.”
The pizzas come as thin and chewy New York style or thick Sicilian slices with caramelized crusts.
Generations of Frank’s fans
If you’re lucky, a favorite pizzeria is passed down like a family heirloom.
Some families have been coming to Frank’s for four generations. A few weeks ago, a family of regulars made Frank’s the destination for a two-month-old daughter’s first meal out, whisking her in in a bassinet.
“They had their first date here and now they have grandkids,” Paula said. “Two-months old. It was her first outing and said they had to bring her to Frank’s Pizza. This is the next generation.”
Paula and Nasser nearly brought one of their own children into Frank’s earlier than expected. Once while taking an order over the phone, a pregnant Paula’s water broke.
“Luckily I was in the kitchen,” Paula said. “A cook, one of the shyest young men you’d see in your life, just looked at me. I didn’t know what to do and he didn’t either. He went and got a mop and handed it to me. His face was bright red.”
Nasser called in someone to cover the restaurant and the couple drove off to the hospital to welcome their second daughter.
“I will have to say that spot in the kitchen is special,” Paula said. “I may have to take up that tile whenever we leave.”
Now in their 60s, the Lachichis don’t expect to hand the restaurant over to their three children, who have their own careers and interests, they said.
But they do hope to pass the recipes and restaurant over to someone else eventually, mostly so the generations of customers continue to grow.
“We’d love to leave it running,” Nasser said. “We owe it to the community. You can’t hold on to it forever.”
With more and more people moving to the Triangle, the legion of Frank’s fans continues to grow.
“The new people are fun too,” Paula said. “One told us she had eaten pizza on three continents and our was the best.”
The Runner-Up
Though it hasn’t been around as long as Frank’s, Trophy Brewing & Pizza is nearing a decade in Raleigh, celebrating its ninth year in 2022.
For one of the Triangle’s favorite breweries, adding pizza became a creative flourish that made sense for owners Chris Powers, Woody Lockwood, David Meeker and Les Stewart.
“Pizza is a personal thing, mostly,” Powers said. “For us, we decided pizza and beer were the perfect meal. ... We wanted to do pizza but crafting it like we do with our beer, giving it all the same attention as we do the beer.”
When Trophy burst on the scene in 2013, the line between breweries and restaurants was still fairly stark, with few breweries also putting out a dedicated food menu.
Powers said the kind of pizza the Trophy owners’ wanted was hard to find around downtown Raleigh.
“There were giant pizzas on display on Hillsborough Street, where you’d go in and pick up a giant slice, but no one was really crafting it like we do with our beer,” Powers said. “And at that time there were very few breweries selling food. We wanted to be a part of the neighborhood, and everybody likes pizza.”
Trophy opened on Morgan Street mostly as a bar, selling drinks as a private club with a doorman and 13 seats inside. As Trophy grew initially, it renovated the kitchen, building a small dining room and patio.
As it continued to grow, it expanded that patio and dining room in the past couple of years, along with moving brewing operations to Maywood Avenue in Raleigh, doubling State of Beer on Hillsborough Street and turning the old Busy Bee Cafe into Young Hearts Distillery.
From its beginning, Trophy’s pizza program matched the creativity in its beer, serving up pies like the Vermonster, made with maple syrup, apples and ham, or the Farmers Market, which has evolved for years based on what’s in season and currently features roasted beet hummus and roasted vegetables.
The classics also get twists, Powers said, with house-made lamb sausage adding depth, and salami kicked up with ghost peppers.
It may be a brewery first, but Powers said that Trophy still became a neighborhood pizza joint, hosting birthday parties and first dates and the sprawling meet-ups that pair best with a half dozen pizzas.
Once, a couple whose relationship began at Trophy asked if a pizza could be shipped to their new home in Nevada.
“They wanted the pizza from their first date and asked if we could Fed Ex them a pizza,” Powers said. “We were blown away and knew it was something we had to do. We ended up shipping the ingredients individually and some dough so they could make it themselves, plus a couple Trophy T-shirts.”
Reaching the finals of the Triangle Pizza Bracket puts Trophy in some rarefied air in the local pizzasphere.
“We’re very excited to be included in a list like this,” Powers said. “It’s awesome for us and shows our hard work has been appreciated, and the hard work of our staff, who are working in some terrible times in the pandemic, putting out great consistent pizza.”
The Final Four
This round featured only neighborhood pizzerias, with Raleigh’s Oakwood Pizza Box and Chapel Hill’s Italian Pizzeria III joining the two finalists.
The Elite Eight
The Triangle’s blazing hot food scene was represented in this round by Durham’s Pizzeria Toro, the artisan pies from Carrboro’a Pizzeria Mercato, popular Raleigh shop Lilly’s Pizza and the Triangle-wide Randy’s Pizza joining our eventual Final Four.
The Sweet Sixteen
500 E. Davie St., Suite 107, Raleigh. benchwarmersbagels.com
Capital Creations Gourmet Pizza
1842 Wake Forest Road, Raleigh. 919-836-8000 or capitalcreations.com
Frank’s Pizza & Italian Restaurant
2030 New Bern Ave., Raleigh. 919-231-8990 or frankspizzainraleigh.com
402 W. Geer St., Durham. 984-219-6578 or facebook.com/hutchins-garage
508 W. Franklin St., Chapel Hill. 919-968-4671 or italianpizzeria3.com
1813 Glenwood Ave., Raleigh. 919-833-0226 or lillyspizza.com
14520 New Falls of Neuse Road, Raleigh. 919-570-9099 or miltonspizza.com
105 E. Main St., Carrboro. napolicarrboro.com
610 N. Person St., Raleigh. 919-594-1605 or oakwoodpizzabox.com
117A W. Main St., Durham. 919-294-8408 or piepushers.com
215 E. Chatham St., Cary. 919-377-8244 or pizzeriafaulisi.com
408 W. Weaver St., Carrboro. 919-967-2277 or pizzeriamercatonc.com
105 E. Chapel Hill St., Durham. 919-908-6936 or pizzeriatoro.com
428 S. McDowell St., Raleigh. 919-803-8660 or ac-restaurants.com/pooleside
Eight locations in the Triangle. randyspizza.com
827 W. Morgan St., Raleigh. 919-803-4849 or trophybrewing.com/brewing-pizza-menu
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "This pizzeria makes fans for life. Meet the winner of our Triangle Pizza Bracket.."
