MOUNTAIN VILLAGE – The warm aroma of baking dough hangs heavy in the air, as white-coated Pizzaiolo (pizza chefs) shovel thin-crust pizzas out of an imported Italian pizza oven.

The 8,000-pound stone oven sits as the centerpiece of the open air kitchen at La Pizzeria, Mountain Village’s newest neighborhood restaurant. The place oozes Italy, from its blue-checked tablecloths and yellow walls to the authentic Italian Coca-Cola glasses to the red Ferrari shirts the wait staff wears. But the real Italian flavor comes not from the restaurant’s milieu, but rather its menu.

Pizzas like the Diavola and Salsiccia Bormina emerge from the oven thin and crispy, bubbling with mozzarella and house-made tomato sauce and laden with ingredients like spicy salami or homemade sausage and mushrooms. Cappuccinos come strong and foamy, while the wines, all from Italy, start at $6 and can be ordered by the glass.

Such a robust Italian character as is found at La Pizzeria may seem unexpected, coming as it does not from the Dolomites, but rather Mountain Village. But La Pizzeria is, after all, another of local Italian restaurateur Paolo Canclini’s progeny.

Canclini, owner of Rustico Ristorante in Telluride and La Piazza del Villagio in Mountain Village, says he wanted to open a traditional Italian pizzeria to bring a real “neighborhood place” to Mountain Village. Preserving an authentic Italian flavor is important, he says, because even non-Italians know when they taste a real Italian pizza. In fact, all of the basic building blocks of a good Italian pizza have been imported from Italy, from the oven in which La Pizzeria pizzas are cooked to the flour and tomatoes from which they’re made. Even the water that goes into the pizza dough comes from Italian bottled water.

Not all ingredients can be sent across the ocean, however, so Canclini and his almost all-Italian kitchen staff have sought out local distributors for the rest. The fresh arugula on the Valtellina pizza is locally grown, as is all the fresh basil used in La Pizzeria recipes, and the Black Angus Bolognese found on The Rockies pizza is made from beef from a Crawford, Colorado natural, organic ranch.

La Pizzeria has also added home-made gelato to its offerings, with traditional flavors like chocolate and pistaccio as well as seasonal favorites like peach and melon, made from locally grown fruit.

Canclini explains that when he decided to open a pizzeria next door to La Piazza (in Mountain Village’s Sunset Plaza) it was very important to him that his product reflect its Italian roots. Canclini, who comes from a long line of Italian chefs, was drawn to Telluride 15 years ago from his home in the Italian ski village of Bormio. There, every piazza, or town square, boasts a neighborhood hang-out – usually, a pizzeria. So not only did Canclini want to bring the flavor of Italy to Mountain Village with the opening of La Pizzeria last January – he also wanted to bring a bit of the Italian neighborhood ambiance.

“It’s a place kids to adults can enjoy,” he says of La Pizzeria. “They can come, share a salad and pizza, have a glass of vino or a gelato… it’s no fuss, very authentic, and very affordable.”

Canclini opened his first Telluride restaurant, Rustico Ristorante, 14 years ago; two years later, he opened La Piazza in Mountain Village’s core. He says the Piazza family has been “eating construction dust” for the last dozen years, watching the Mountain Village core transform from a sleepy base area for the Telluride Ski Area into a real town center. And what that town center needed was a locals- and family-friendly place to meet friends, catch a soccer or US Open tennis match on the big screen, and enjoy an inexpensive meal (12 inch pizzas start at a mere $10). To better serve locals, La Pizzeria is open year-round.

“We want to create this great feeling of a neighborhood up here,” Canclini says, noting that with Poacher’s Pub next door and the Telluride Coffee Company coffee shop nearby, the Village core is slowly transforming into a more robust community center.

La Pizzeria is open for lunch and dinner, and to-go orders are available by calling 728-0737 (you can see their menu at www.telluridepizzeria.com).

Canclini warns, however, that some of his customers have found fault with their to-go pizzas: “They’ve told me that they smelled so good, it was too much time to wait until they got home [to eat them.]”