A Slice of Southern Pie

In Italian, Arditi means “daring and bold”—and thirty-eight-year-old Travis Eaves, the owner of Arditi Pizzeria, is exactly that. After opening his restaurant on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, he had to fight to stay afloat, which meant shuttering his dream to open a second location in the Athens area at the time. Despite those early hurdles, he has done far more than just survive over the last eight years, building a loyal customer base of regular Lawrenceville-area diners. 

Despite the challenges of hiring and training a young crew of local high school and college recruits, Travis truly loves what he does. “It’s tough to retrain new employees every time they return to school,” he acknowledges. As we talk, one of his young staff members shouts, “He’s the best boss!” Like many of his team, she was recruited from Travis’s own alma mater, Brookwood High School, located less than a mile down the road. 

Travis Eaves, owner of Arditi Pizzeria

The restaurant business has always been on Travis’s radar. “When I was a kid, my mom said I wanted to open a sandwich shop,” he recalls. “I’ve been in the restaurant business for most of my life.” After spending time working at local Italian eateries, Travis was determined to venture out on his own, setting a personal goal to be self-employed by thirty. He was twenty-nine when he opened Arditi in 2018. 

The beginning was tough. Once Travis and his former business partner acquired the space, they completed most of the buildout themselves. They even slept overnight in the building when the front wall was removed to install the wood-fired oven. “This oven weighed over five thousand pounds before it was tiled,” Travis explains, adding that it took a forklift to move it into the building. 

Before Arditi Pizzeria arrived, Lawrenceville had no other  wood-fired pizza restaurants—and certainly none using ancient grains imported from Italy for their dough. “It’s about simple, high-quality ingredients that make a great pizza,” Travis says as he sauces a newly stretched Margherita pie destined for the 900-degree oven. “We use only San Marzano tomatoes from Italy in our sauce.” Legend has it that the  Margherita pizza pie was originally created for Queen Margherita of Savoy when she visited Naples in 1889. 

Diners can select from a curated list of pie options, ranging from the Americano—doused with proverbial pepperoni—to the Diavola, seasoned with fiery Calabrian peppers from Italy. “We stripped the menu down to focus strictly on pizza from the start,” Travis says. The menu is split into red and white categories. White variations include the savory four-cheese Cinque Formaggi and the Meatball and Funghi pie. Not to be overlooked is the house salad: a surprisingly delicious mix of greens, nuts, seeds, parmesan, and pancetta, tossed with roasted tomatoes and a drizzle of high-quality, freshly pressed olive oil from California. 

As we wrap up our conversation, Travis offers me a perfectly blistered slice of Margherita pizza hot out of the fiery beast’s mouth. After taking a hefty bite, I can’t help but think…Queen Margherita would approve.

Arditi Pizzeria is located at 2948 Five Forks Trickum Rd, Lawrenceville, GA 30044 (407) 336-7720