The review from 2010:
Time to get back to places I've never been to. While arriving at Caesar's for the last pizza, I noticed a new place in the old Bellacino's location. This new place, called Porta Via Italian Kitchen, instantly peaked my curiosity. I of course wondered if it had anything to do with the old Pizzeria Porta Via that was on Tennessee Blvd in Murfreesboro while I was in school down there. As soon as I walked through the front door, I could tell that it probably had nothing to do at all with the Murfreesboro Pizzeria.
The interior of this place was really modern, including some swanky chairs that were surprisingly comfortable. They also had a great wine selection with the bottles displayed very neatly on the wall behind the bar. All this seemed appropriate for its location. This end of White Bridge Rd is slowly becoming swallowed by the Belle Meade and West Meade neighborhoods. They've got the brand new Publix in the area and Caesar's has been renamed to a bistro. They've put up walls to hide the trailer park and even cleaned up that dirty little Citgo station on White Bridge. Pretty soon White Bridge won't be our favorite mostly safe but trashy road around town anymore.
Once inside, we were seated almost immediately and our drinks were ordered. While glancing over the menu I quickly noticed that pepperoni was not an option. The closest thing they had was peppered salami. This actually made me a little happy. In Italy and throughout most of Europe pepperoni is not a pizza topping. The only place I found it was during a starved emergency stop at a Pizza Hut somewhere in the Netherlands. I ordered the peppered salami, or Margherita Con Finocchiona pizza and continued to enjoy the most furious Coke I've had all Summer. After a very short wait, and a few pieces of complimentary bread, the pizza was delivered to our table. I was even more excited to find an uncut pizza on my table served with only a knife. This is exactly the way it was first served to me in Old Jersey aka Southern Italy. The 12" uncut pizza with globs of mozzarella was the traditional style of Margherita pizza served over there. I knew I was in for a treat.
The uncut crust was extremely thin and slightly crispy around the edges. They apparently use flour imported directly from Naples in order to achieve the taste of the crust and to conform to strict guidelines as to what makes a Neapolitan pizza. The crust and globs of cheese made for a bit of a messy pizza which called for the use of a knife and fork. After cutting into the pie to serve ourselves a couple of slices, it was time to give it a try. The first flavor that really hit me was the sauce. The sauce on the pizza was sort of sweet, but not like most sweet sauces are in the States. It wasn't sweetened with any sort of seasoning or spice or anything. The small bit of sweetness present was a natural sweetness that comes from the use of grape tomatoes instead of Roma tomatoes like most pizzerias use. The sauce and the spiced salami were the most dominant flavors in the pizza made with all fresh and natural ingredients. You could really taste the difference in their food. You could just tell that nothing was coming out of a can or sitting in a freezer for over a week. This may be the new number one pizza for the Summer. It just reminded me so much of pizza I had in Italy and the ingredients just tasted so fresh and so much like real food as opposed to just another fast food meal.
Not only was the pizza amazing, but the wait staff was super friendly and efficient. It seemed like everyone was just in a constant flow of movement getting so many things done at the same time. It was probably the best team effort I've ever seen. I was getting low on my Coke and my server was busy so another server just walked by and brought out a fresh one without me having to say anything. Then there was a server who dropped and broke a glass by the bar while running food to a table and without hesitation, another server walked over and swept it up. I had never seen anything like this. It usually seems to be an every person for themselves type of situation.
The smallish size of the dining room made for a pretty noisy place, but we were such in our own world with this pizza it didn't really seem to matter. We could also still easily talk to each other across the table without having to raise our voices at all.
Porta Via Italian Kitchen is located at 21 White Bridge Rd #104 and is open Monday through Saturday from 11am to 10pm. Price wise it's right on par with everyone else when it comes to pizza. My pizza was $11 and the total bill was right around $16
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