Na Favola in Greenwood Village: Roman Pizza Worth Knowing

A 4.9 on Google is the kind of rating that makes me skeptical before it makes me curious. Most places with that score either have fifty reviews from friends and family or they're genuinely doing something right. Na Favola had enough reviews to catch my attention, and the fact that it opened late last year near Cherry Hills Village in Greenwood Village — not exactly a neighborhood I think of as a hotbed for new restaurant energy — made me want to go check it out for myself.

What the Place Is About

Na Favola is an Italian restaurant run by owners who are actually from Italy, which matters here because the food reflects that directly. The approach is straightforward: fewer ingredients, good technique, let the food speak for itself. That's not a novel concept to talk about, but it's harder to execute than people realize, especially with pasta and pizza where there's nowhere to hide if something is off. This isn't a big, sprawling Italian-American operation. It reads more like a neighborhood spot where someone is cooking food they actually care about.

The Roman Pizza

This is the part I want to spend the most time on because it's the thing that sets Na Favola apart from most Italian places in the Denver area. The pizza here is Roman style, which you genuinely don't come across often. Roman pizza is thin — thinner than Neapolitan, crispier, lighter. It doesn't have that puffy, charred edge that most people picture when they think wood-fired pizza. Instead it's almost cracker-like in texture, with a snap to it, and because it's so light you don't feel weighed down after eating it.

I've had Roman-style pizza a handful of times and the execution varies a lot. At Na Favola it landed well. The crust held up without being dry, the toppings were restrained in a way that felt purposeful rather than stingy, and the whole thing tasted clean. That's probably the best word for it — clean. When a pizza only has a few components, every one of them has to pull weight, and these did.

The Pasta

The pasta follows the same philosophy as the pizza. Simple preparations, quality ingredients, nothing drowning in heavy sauce just to add complexity. I'll say this: if you go in expecting big, rich, over-the-top Italian-American portions, you might need to recalibrate your expectations slightly. This is more in line with how Italians actually eat — portions that feel right rather than portions designed to impress you with their size. For some people that's a plus, for others it might be an adjustment.

What I can say is that the pasta tasted good in the way simple food tastes good when someone knows what they're doing. There's a difference between a sparse dish that's underwhelming and a sparse dish that's confident, and Na Favola's pasta falls into the second category.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

Greenwood Village isn't the most convenient stop if you're coming from central Denver. It's worth building in the drive time if you're not already in the south suburbs. The restaurant is newer, so it still has that energy of a place figuring out its rhythm — which is mostly fine but worth knowing going in. Given the ratings and the ownership, I'd expect it to keep getting more consistent as they settle in.

The Bottom Line

Na Favola is a legitimately good Italian restaurant doing something a little different with the Roman pizza that I think is worth experiencing on its own terms. The owners clearly have a point of view about food and it shows in what ends up on the plate. It's not trying to be everything, and that restraint is probably why people keep coming back. If you're in the Greenwood Village area or willing to make the drive south, it's a solid addition to the Denver Italian scene — and that 4.9 rating starts to make a lot more sense once you eat there.