Buona Forchetta's Encinitas outpost on North Coast Highway 101 is the third location from Italian-born restaurateur Matteo Cattaneo, housing a Naples-built, gold-tiled wood-fire oven named Isabella after his daughter that reaches temperatures between 700 and 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Neapolitan-style pizza program has earned a Gambero Rosso Best Pizzeria designation and multiple San Diego Magazine critics' awards, anchoring a cocktail-and-pizza bar on a stretch of Coast Highway 101 that includes Pacific Coast Grill in Cardiff-by-the-Sea. Cattaneo opened the original Buona Forchetta in San Diego's South Park in 2013 and expanded into this 1,100-square-foot Encinitas space with a side patio and private-event room. The kitchen extends past pizza into handmade pastas, risotto, and gnocchi, with a full bar pouring cocktails like the Italian Drop made with Russian Standard vodka, limoncello, and fresh lemon juice. Nonna-supervised dessert specials rotate alongside house-made gelato and tiramisu, a traditional pastry pipeline distinct from the Neapolitan-dough pizza at Corner Pizza in Leucadia. The signature Margherita uses San Marzano tomatoes, fior di latte mozzarella, and fresh basil on a 60-to-72-hour cold-fermented dough blistered in Isabella's wood-fired chamber.