Pi Napo pizzeria opens in old Fry’s Spring Station [Video]

Residents of Charlottesville’s Fry’s Spring neighborhood may need to heed Julia Roberts’ sage advice from “Eat, Pray, Love” and buy themselves “some bigger jeans.”

Ten months after the closure of Fry’s Spring Station, the popular pizzeria that operated out of the former service station at 2115 Jefferson Park Ave. for 14 years, a trio of longtime friends is reigniting the pizza oven — only this time it’ll be cooking up pies with a decidedly Neapolitan flair.

Pi Napo opened for business on Aug. 22.

The business was first conceived by Onur Başeğmez, Matt Yildirim and Giovanni Pat while the three friends were sampling slices of Naples’ traditional thin-crust, simple-ingredient pizza. Pat, an Italian native, invited his friends to old Napoli to pitch a business idea.

“He invited us to Italy,” Başeğmez, a native of Turkey who moved to the States 11 years ago, told The Daily Progress. “We went there, and then once we had the authentic Italian …