Meatballs shine at Braza Brava

Restaurant boasts 21 specialty pizzas

Sitting at the corner of Broadway and Sunset Road, Braza Brava Pizza Napoletana is a full-blown Italian restaurant.

But the lineup of 21 specialty pizzas is the undeniable star of the show, thanks to the woodfired pizza oven that was built in Italy and transported to San Antonio.

Whether you like them with traditional red marinara or bianche (white) style, Braza Brava uses imported ingredients from Italy whenever it can. Instead of traditional Americanized toppings like pepperoni, hamburger and Canadian bacon, Braza Brava relies more on classic cuts like prosciutto, speck, calabrese soppressata and the house-made Italian sausage.

All of the pizzas are considered personal size, cut to about a 12-inch diameter with a crust that has reasonable char, but is puffy on the outside and fairly doughy on the inside. It can get a little droopy at the end points, so it’s a two-handed pizza eating experience for the first bite or two.

Braza Brava is sandwiched in between Capo’s Pizzeria and Florio’s Pizza on Broadway, two places that have already been given the top “worth a drive” status in this series, but it holds its own with plenty of pizza punch.

Best pizza: Sliced meatballs are an underappreciated pizza topping. Don’t skip over them here, because the meatball marinara ($16) is proof that Braza Brava isn’t the type of place to take shortcuts. The pizza had about three full meatballs sliced and diced as a topping with a velveteen texture that screamed they were made by hand.

They were so good paired with the house tomato sauce, I would be quick to order just the meatballs as a main dish with a glass of red wine.

Other pizzas: We haven’t seen a lot of seafood pizza toppings in this series so far, and that made the Pizza Salmon ($20) required sampling. It came with a generous amount of smoked salmon spread throughout the white pie, accompanied with tender sticks of asparagus. Braza Brava took a risk putting this outlier pizza on its menu, and eating it is the reward.

The Salsiccia Piccante ($16) features the house-made Italian sausage paired with calabrese chile peppers. The sausage shows up on a lot of the pizzas on the menu and has a fair amount of spice. On the Piccante pizza, sweet caramelized red onions provide a nice contrast to the meat, as dostrategically placed pools of ricotta cheese.

And if you want to go full vegan, Braza Brava has one on the menu named the Giardino Vegan Pizza ($16) that takes cheese out of the equation. I wasn’t ready to do that, which made the Pizza Primavera ($16) as close as I was willing to get. Anchored with a layer of mozzarella, it was a farmers market bounty with roasted red peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, sliced cherry tomatoes and a layer of artichoke hearts that took flavor command of the pizza.

The meatball marinara pizza at Braza Brava Pizza Napoletana comes loaded with thick slices of house-made meatballs.

The Pizza Salmon at Braza Brava Pizza Napoletana comes with fresh mozzarella, olive oil, asparagus and salmon.