New family Italian restaurant opens in South Hill with pizza and pasta menu

South Hill just got a family-style Italian restaurant and the location and owner will be familiar.

Napoli Italiano quietly opened last week with a limited menu of pizza and pasta in a strip mall just off Meridian.

It’s also home to its sister business, Speakeasy Lounge, which takes up the right half of the space.

More recently, the restaurant side of the space held another sister restaurant, Karma Indian Cuisine and Lounge. It operated there from November to February while Karma’s original location was remodeled.

Karma returned to its original home last month, making way for Napoli Italiano.

The full menu won’t debut for two more weeks, and the grand opening is planned for early April. If visiting before then, know that the menu and hours will be limited.

Here’s a quick first look at the restaurant and what to expect in the next few weeks.

Staff: Ramesh Kumar is Napoli Italiano’s owner. He also owns Speakeasy Lounge in the same building, Karma Indian Cuisine in South Hill and downtown Puyallup’s Fiesta Taqueria. Dane Freye is general manager of Napoli Italiano. Jason Folven is bar manager. Nathaniel Cooper is executive chef.

The chef: Cooper most recently spent six months at Asado, the Argentinean steakhouse in Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue neighborhood. He previously was chef of The Mantle in Bonney Lake. He is originally from the San Francisco area but has worked and lived from Los Angeles to Seattle to Italy.

His style of cooking: Cooper describes his cooking as uncomplicated, and some of the menu will reflect the food he grew to love when he lived in Tuscany.

The menu now: A succinct list of pasta that includes carbonara with pancetta, chicken fettuccine, spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, cheese ravioli, a vegetarian spaghetti squash and a few others ($16 to $26). A few soups ($6 to $8), salads ($12) and appetizers ($10 to $14) also are listed). There’s also a list of 10 pizzas ($18 to $23).

What’s coming to the menu: Cooper said he’ll add a steak, probably a pork chop and seafood dishes to the menu. He also plans to feature handmade pasta dishes as rotating specials.

Salad bar: Following the grand opening, the restaurant expects to begin offering a salad bar, which general manager Dane Freye predicted will be popular at lunch. The salad bar can be visited alone or added on as an addition to dinner, he said.

The dining room: The booths are gone and the current seating is a mix of banquette seating and tables for four, dressed with table linens. Don’t worry about those linen tablecloths, kids are welcome. Cooper is working on a pizza and pasta menu for kids right now.

The dining room seats 60 now but can almost double capacity when fully operating, said Freye.

Spirits/wine: Folven, bar manager of the restaurant and attached lounge, is designing lemoncello and other specialty cocktails. There also will be a two-page wine list with seven by-the-glass selections and about 20 bottles in the $20 to $50 range. A few higher end wine selections also will be listed. The bulk of the menu will feature Tuscany wines with a few Northwest selections.

Speakeasy Lounge: It’s still plugging along with a list of 350 whiskeys and specialty cocktails designed by Folven.

This story was originally published March 22, 2018 at 12:00 PM with the headline "New family Italian restaurant opens in South Hill with pizza and pasta menu."