The Goodfellas Pizzeria opens on Hollywood Boulevard with a 1920s room and karaoke

The Goodfellas Pizzeria opens at 1917 Hollywood Blvd on Saturday, October 17, in a dining room built to look like Italian-American New York in the 1920s. Portraits of film's crime families line the exposed brick, several tables carry their names, and the floor staff work in period dress. The restaurant runs from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day, which makes it a late room as much as a pizzeria, and its owners say the whole thing began with an evening out they went looking for and could not find.

Five years, and a night they could not find anywhere

The owner spent more than thirty years in business across Europe, managing and investing Italian investors' capital in Spain, Germany, the Canary Islands and France. He says the idea for The Goodfellas came from somewhere closer to home. He and his wife, Cristina, kept returning to the same conversation about how their own evenings had changed: they no longer wanted a nightclub or a party to enjoy one, and what they were after was a room with a family feeling, where you could eat well, meet people, and stay a while.

They went looking for that room and never found it, so they built it. The owner describes five years of work with a European team before it was finished, and says the test was always the same question, the one he kept asking himself after dinner somewhere else: now what do we do?

A room dressed for 1930

The period setting is the premise rather than a layer of decoration. Portraits hang the length of the brick, among them Sophia Loren, Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando, with references to The Godfather and Scarface worked through the room. Several tables are named for film's crime families, the Corleone, the Soprano and the Al Capone among them, and guests can ask for one when they book.

The owner says the detail was deliberate well past the pictures: FBI badges, vintage props, hats, and the Sicilian coppola. He describes the intent as a tribute to a time when people shook hands and talked face to face, before smartphones, and says the point of the room is to put guests in that era for an evening. Servers work in period-inspired attire, and the music is nostalgic rather than contemporary.

Three flours and a 72-hour dough

Fifteen pizzas anchor the menu, each named for a crime family or the film it came from, running from the Corleone to the Scarface, and each offered on a Neapolitan or a Deep Dish crust. The calzoni carry the same idea and are named Don Vito, Michael, Sonny and Fredo. Around them the list runs antipasti, primi such as lasagna and gnocchi, Sicilian cannoli and tiramisu, with Italian wines by the glass or the bottle.

The restaurant says its dough blends three flours, Italian 00, durum wheat and whole wheat, and ferments for at least 72 hours. The owner says the blend is chosen so the dough stays soft after the pizza has cooled, which is the part most kitchens lose. He describes the pizza recipes as decades-old Italian ones and says the kitchen works by hand in house. His own measure of quality is not how a plate looks when it lands: a guest who does not like a dish, he says, can ask for it to be replaced at no cost.

Karaoke, and the hours built around it

A dedicated space for karaoke and live entertainment sits in the regular week rather than arriving as an occasional booking. The owner is specific that it is not meant as a competition or a search for the best singer in the room, and that the point is for anyone to take a turn, whether or not they can sing.

The hours are built around that. The Goodfellas is open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. seven days a week, with the kitchen running until midnight Monday to Wednesday and until 1 a.m. Thursday through Sunday, after which pizza is the only thing still going out. The same address is a lunch counter at midday, a themed dinner room through the evening, and a karaoke room with a working oven after the plates stop.

The grand opening is Saturday, October 17 at 5 p.m., with pizza and Italian dinner specials from the first seating. The restaurant is at 1917 Hollywood Blvd in Hollywood, between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and posts as @thegoodfellasfl.