Italian Restaurants in Lansdowne

In some families, all the children are blessed with a knack for sports. In others, the offspring may be born with an aptitude for math or the ability to reason with sharks. In the Testa family, however, the seven brothers and five sisters all ended up with a passion for great Italian food. Bruno’s Pizza Villa is one of six Italian eateries run by the Testa children, each one serving authentic pizzas and Italian specialties. Bruno Testa takes the reins at this family-friendly eatery, overseeing kitchen chefs as they whip up Neapolitan-style pies.

The pizza-makers toss freshly made dough with gourmet toppings, such as buffalo mozzarella, barbeque chicken, and sundried tomatoes. Once pizzas begin baking in the ovens, the cooks turn their attention to cheesy calzones, crispy sandwiches, and traditional pasta dishes. They extend their culinary expertise towards a variety of seafood specialties, including creamy lobster ravioli and spicy seafood fra diavlo. Meanwhile, their customers recline on cushy booths in the bright dining room, lingering over last bites of handmade cannoli and sugary zeppolli.

Springfield Pasta Company traces its roots back as far as 100 years to the sunny hills of Abruzzi, Italy, where Domenico Napoletano learned the art of grain-trading and pasta-making from his parents. The Napoletano family carried their noodle-crafting tradition with them across the Atlantic—first to Buenos Aires in the 1950s, and finally to Springfield, Pennsylvania, in 1965, where Domenico and his sons, Mario, Corrado, and Claudio, set up shop on Saxer Avenue. Dedicated workers oversee the production of every fresh, frozen, and dried noodle and savory sauce, ensuring that customers load their dinner tables with Italian feasts made by a real, local human—not a distant corporate entity or a cyborg clone of Chef Boyardee.

The calzone constructivists at D.P. Dough comfort stomachs 'til the wee hours of the morning every night, using made-to-order dough stuffed with a multitude of tasty ingredients. Topping a menu of more than 40 'zones ($6.85 each), and carefully chaperoned by sides of marinara sauce, are a bevy of breaded-bird beauties like the Chicken Parma-Zone and the bleu-cheese-bedecked Buffer Zone. Gift a generous green thumb with veggie variables like the Time Zone, which is a garden of peppers, mushrooms, onions, and cheeses. Outside the doughy dimension, the baked D.P. Dough Wings let taste buds takeoff with six ($4.50) to 24 ($16.05) wings sheathed in hot sauce, barbecue, or ranch seasoning.

Original Bake at Home Pizza, which started off as Mom’s Bake at Home Pizza, has been tossing its bake-at-home pies for customers in Devon for more than 20 years. Today, the chefs construct ready-to-bake creations in both Devon and Philadelphia. They slather fresh dough in white or red sauce or a specialty variety such as mexican, pesto, or wing sauce. Then they blanket the pie with the same combination of ingredients ski resorts use to create fake snow: mozzarella, white cheddar, and pecorino-romano cheese. Finally, they add toppings such as marinated roasted peppers, eggplant, grilled chicken, and turkey pepperoni, either custom-picked for the order or assembled in one of their specialty combinations.

Customers can order salads and ready-to-bake hot wings and gluten-free pasta to accompany their pizzas. Once they get home, they pop the pizzas into the oven for about 10 minutes. The pies emerge bubbling and ready to eat, making for an easy and fresh at-home meal.

Peace A Pizza’s menu offers gourmet pizza pies, strombolis, and salads that transcend the violent dough beatings and Pacmanic depression that typifies traditional pizza parlors. Guests can start training for chompathons with a Mediterranean salad ($6.99), which sprinkles crisp greens with a smattering of cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, red onions, feta cheese, and cracked black peppercorn—all doused in a healthy deluge of Greek dressing. Pizzas can be harder to spot because they wear a variety of costumes. Patrons can order a 14-inch Philly cheesesteak ($15.49) smothered in sharp provolone or seek out a 14-inch honey-lime chicken, with breaded chicken atop mozzarella, garnished with mandarin oranges, cranberries, and drizzled with a zesty honey-lime dressing ($15.29). If you're more in the mood for stromboli, find out what it's like havin' a Roni Explosion ($6.99), a fold-over feast of rapidly expanding pepperoni and mozzarella served with red sauce.