Where Neapolitan Tradition Meets Pizza Anarchy

A Bronte pie and a Margherita pie from Sorellina. / Photography by Casey Robinson

The white walls at Sorellina seem to glow when the sun begins to set. And at the bar, the plates never stop coming — spreads of Italian cheese and salumi, olives sprinkled with orange zest, arugula salads with fresh peach and gorgonzola, bites of spicy ’nduja sausage battered like sweet-and-sour chicken from a Chinese takeout joint and piled in white bowls. In high summer, when the sun seemed to stay up forever, there was a languid cool to the early hours of service — a kind of lazy anticipation that felt like waiting for dinner guests who were perpetually late in arriving. But now, when golden hour comes early to Broad Street, it feels like energy stacked upon energy. Like a restaurant that’s finally finding its proper gear.

I first talked to Joe Cicala about Sorellina eight months ago, back when the place was nothing more than half a dream and some Saturday night pop-ups. It was a restaurant born of necessity — a sister (and neighbor) operation to Cicala at the Divine Lorraine that came about as a way to serve big crowds fast on theater nights so that Cicala (the fancier sister) could keep right on serving regular-sized crowds slowly. Pizza was a natural format for Joe because he is one of this city’s pizza Jedis — a passionate pie academic who studies regularly at the Neapolitan temples and a dedicated, lifelong practitioner of the art. A few years back, he had his own serious pizza joint (Brigantessa), where wood-fired Neapolitans were treated as objects of worship. But this place, he told me — even eight months ago — was not going to be like Brigantessa at all. “Not so serious,” he said. “The point is to have fun.”

So now there’s Italian hip-hop on the radio, spitfire syllables in a language I don’t speak. Now a modern-art Sophia Loren watches the dining room from one of the Divine Lorraine’s exposed brick walls. Now Joe and his crew do these Naples street-punk-style pies with swollen, high-hydration crusts that thin out like onionskin paper at the center, charred and stretchy and gorgeous, coming from all-electric ovens that knock the pies out fast and with remarkable consistency.

Chef Joe Cicala

The Stella is familiar — an early experiment from Joe’s Brigantessa days with six corners twisted up like ears and stuffed with ricotta, around a central well just barely touched with DOP San Marzano tomato sauce, mozz, and the spicy ’nduja that appears again and again on Sorellina’s menu. There’s a marinara-style, heavy on the garlic, with tomatoes grown on a volcano; a salsiccia e patate, smoky and shingled with rosemary roasted potatoes, cut with the vegetal heat of long hots; and the Bronte, which has become something of a star. It hasn’t left the menu since opening day.

The Bronte uses the char on its crust to balance out the cacophony of powerful multitudes it contains: pistachio pesto plus toasted pistachio slivers, garlic in volumes that border on hazardous, then mozzarella, mortadella layered over everything, and a ball of lemony-sour burrata set on top. It is a pizza you eat with your hands first, then with a fork, then with your fingers again later — hands to hold a slice, fork to break off shreds of burrata to be smeared on that whisper-thin center crust, fingers to pinch off scraps of crust, and mortadella to drag along the plate, scooping up the leftovers. It is a great pie, ridiculously overwrought and complicated, but all the better for it. A perfect, messy riot of a thing.

The Stella pie at Sorellina

Add to all this hot potato croquettes stuffed with smoked mozzarella and prosciutto, and Calabrese peppers stuffed with tuna; Aperol spritzes at sunset; and glasses of Campari and vermouth with a splash of soda that make you feel like you’re living your life in black and white, leaning on the bar like Tom Ripley, and you get it: the fun. You can see the mark Joe was aiming for and how he hits it, dead center, in moments when the floor is buzzing with servers and the evening starts to bleed slowly into night.

The bar at Sorellina

Sorellina is a place purpose-built for crowds and for speed and for loud noises. It’s a restaurant meant to be discovered at 8:45 on a Friday night when you have other plans. It has big pop-up energy even now that it’s a real, grown-up restaurant, and while, in quiet moments, all that potential can feel anxious, like an engine revving with nowhere to go, put butts in seats and bodies at the bar and the place just lights up. Ultimately, what he wanted was a place that was cool and bright and welcoming and joyous to act as a balance to the tranquility and slow, delicious seriousness of their eponymous restaurant on the other side of the Divine Lorraine’s wide lobby.

And with Sorellina, that is exactly what he got.

3 Stars — Come from anywhere in Philly

Rating Key
0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America

Published as “The Prodigal Pizza” in the November 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.