The man behind a hugely popular Italian restaurant in Stirling is bringing his “benchmark” pizzas back to the city after four years.
Alex Sorlei, 32, and David Atkins, 38, are launching Piotsa Pizza in the former Strathcarron Hospice charity shop on King Street.
Piotsa – which means pizza in Gaelic – will sell a variety of pizzas, from Italian classics to some with a Scottish twist.
The restaurant will be able to seat 25 customers at a time and will also offer takeaways.
Pizza making workshops, wine tasting and other events are also planned.
The opening marks the return of Alex, who used to run Napizza on Friars Street, to the Stirling restaurant scene.
He opened the much-missed pizzeria in 2016 while studying international politics and French at the University of Stirling.
After a night out, Alex – who previously lived in Naples – was craving light Italian pizza rather than the fried food on offer.
He saw a unit for rent and put his idea into action the very next day.
“I had absolutely no idea how to make pizza,” Alex recalls. “It was quite a risk because the pizza was a bit more soggy, it was a different type and it wasn’t like the takeaway that they were used to.”
The award-winning restaurant lived beyond his 2018 graduation, but in early 2020, Alex was suffering from burn out and decided to close down before quality slipped.
Little did he know, his pizzas would stick in David’s mind for the next four years.
“It set the benchmark – it was how everything compared to Napizza,” said David, who described the restaurant’s closure as “devastating”.
Napizza fan kickstarted Piotsa Pizza
In July 2023, while in the line for a pizza restaurant in Naples, David decided to message Alex via social media.
From there, a friendship between two pizza lovers developed into a business plan.
While Alex focuses on the food and the marketing, David – whose background is in accountancy – handles the financial side of the business.
The pair hope to bring Scotland and Italy together, using local produce as well as Italian goods to create high quality food.
Once open, plans include adding pasta to the menu and creating an outdoor dining area at the back of the restaurant.
Alex said: “It’s exciting now – the fun is about to start.
“It’s so nice when we put all this work into it and we see things in the physical world because so far it’s all been in theory.”
Conversation