Pizza Returns to the Stanley Marketplace This Fall Thanks to Coperta Team

The Stanley Marketplace in Aurora is replacing its shuttered pizza restaurant, Sazza, with…more pizza!

The still-unnamed pizzeria comes from the Beast & Bottle and Coperta team, who most recently opened Pizzeria Coperta inside Broadway Market. (Broadway Market and Stanley share some of the same developers.) The new Stanley location will feature the same Roman-style pizza as at the other food hall, as well as a full menu of pastas, salads, panini, and antipasti.

“It will be a modern-day pizzeria, so of course we’ll have pizza, but also the classic Roman pastas you’ll find at Coperta,” says partner Aileen Reilly. “It’s a mash-up of the two menus.”

Some of those pastas include what Reilly calls “the big Roman three” that Coperta fans routinely devour: spaghetti cacio e pepe, bucatini all’amatriciana, and rigatoni carbonara. On the pizza side, expect the thin-crust round pies and thicker pizza al taglio (rectangular slices sold by weight) that they’ve been cooking up at Broadway Market since February.

When Sazza left the Stanley, Reilly, along with partners Paul C. Reilly and JP Taylor Jr., were in the process of opening Pizzeria Coperta at Broadway Market with the two food halls’ shared developer, Mark Shaker. They enjoyed working with Shaker on the project and jumped at the chance to take over the Sazza space. Their plan is to redesign it into a relaxed, counter-service restaurant where diners are encouraged to hang out for a while.

Helping with that hang-out vibe are the taps that Sazza left behind, which won’t stay dry for long. Taylor, Coperta’s wine director, plans on filling them with wines and spritzes—Reilly mentioned an Aperol and an elderflower spritz—so yeah, you’ll want to settle in.

The team hopes to open the Aurora pizzeria in late fall.