Kyle Jacovino doesn’t do things halfway. He rolled into Savannah back in 2013 to open The Florence, and pizza was always the thing simmering in the background for him — the dish he loved most, waiting for its moment. That moment came when he opened Pizzeria Vittoria Napoletana, and in the years since, it’s become the standard everyone else in town gets measured against. Best pizza in Georgia, according to Food & Wine. Countless other accolades stacked up behind that. If you wanted true Neapolitan — the char, the puffy cornicione, the naturally leavened dough done right — Vittoria was the only address in Savannah that mattered.

Seven years later, you can bet Kyle has heard plenty of whispers, quietly and otherwise, that the masses want a great New York style slice of pizza. Not a knockoff. Not a gas-station approximation. The real thing — foldable, blistered on the bottom, big enough that one piece is basically a meal.

I’ve wondered for months how Kyle was going to handle pizza at his original Starland Yard location while doing the same pies around the corner at his fairly newbie Lucia Pasta Bar. That’s a lot of pizza in a small radius. I wasn’t the only one to wonder, either.

We got this answer this week. The plan is to give the people what they want. Pizzeria Vittoria is getting a makeover.

The announcement was made via social media on Tuesday, that beginning July 31 through the end of August, Vittoria is having some work done. A full transformation: a new deck oven going in, the kitchen reworked, and an entirely new menu built from scratch. When it reopens, it’s 18-inch New York-style pies, pizza by the slice, and — worth cheering for — the return of the old-school meatball grinders. And true to form, he’s not abandoning his roots to do it: the dough will still be naturally leavened, just built for a different style entirely.

Raise your hand if you are not surprised. Bravo.

The Neapolitan program isn’t disappearing, either. It’s simply moved next door, so to speak — Vittoria’s sister restaurant Lucia has quietly become the new home for that whole naturally leavened Neapolitan lineup over the past year. So if you need your classic Vittoria fix, Lucia’s Pasta Bar is your new go-to.

I’m looking forward to talking to Kyle about this move perhaps ahead of their opening. When you’ve already built the best version of one thing, pivoting to a second style is a real swing — but I think we’d agreed that he has has earned the benefit of the doubt. If their Neapolitan program set the bar this high, there’s no reason to think the New York pies won’t do the same.

There is a lot of great food coming to Savannah over the next few months. We’ve talked about that quite a bit here. Now we have one more to add to it. I suspect Vittoria’s New York Style to be among the most talked about re-openings of the Fall season.

Great great news. More soon.

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