Cafe-Lift

Bufad Pizza at the corner of 13th and Spring Garden has just one more hurdle to clear before their planned 6pm soft opening tonight: a final health inspection scheduled for just 2 hours before they unlock the doors. And while owners Mike and Jeniphur Pasquarello (the team behind Cafe Lift and Prohibition Taproom) are ready, they’re also a little nervous.

“We’re going to be a little crazy until that’s done,” Mike told me when I got him on the phone this morning.

But nerves aside, he also told me a little bit about the 30-seat Neapolitan-style pizzeria that he and his wife are bringing to the neighborhood. He bragged a little about his oven (a traditional firebox that cooks at about 900 degrees and can blister a pie in mere seconds) and talked about how he’ll handle take-away slices at the eat-in joint the same way they do in Rome–by cooking up long, rectangular pizzas and cutting them to order with scissors. The sliceable pies will include everything from the potato and provolone, Pizza Rosa with hand-crushed San Marzano tomatoes and traditional olive-oil-and-rosemary Pizza Bianco pictured above, to odder combinations like butternut squash, sage, parmesan cheese and crushed amaretti cookies–which Mike swears is delicious.

You can check out the full eat-in menu after the jump.

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