Butler Street Has a Pizza for Almost Every Night of the Week, and the Square Ones Arrive in November

It's Monday night in Lawrenceville and you want pizza. Which of the pizza kitchens along the Butler Street corridor is actually open?

Only one of the four, going by the latest published hours, and it sits on 51st Street just off Butler. On a Friday all four are serving. The schedules interlock more than they compete. Driftwood Oven, Pizza Lupo, Spirit and ippa each close on different days, and each makes a different style of pie. Together that covers most of the week and most of the ways a pizza can be built. In November, La Grassa opens at 5336 Butler Street with Detroit-style squares. That adds the style the street doesn't have yet, at an address farther up Butler than the rest of the group.

The week, by published hours

For Driftwood Oven, Pizza Lupo and Spirit, this table uses each business's own posted hours as of early October 2026. ippa's hours come from Axios's June 2026 report, the most recent local listing available. Restaurant hours change with the seasons, so check before you walk over.

Three patterns show up in the grid. Monday belongs to Spirit alone. Tuesday and Wednesday belong to Driftwood and Pizza Lupo, which are both open on the two nights Spirit is dark. Sunday splits by time of day: ippa closes at 5 p.m., Spirit's pizzeria opens at 5, and Driftwood's 8 a.m. start covers the morning. Thursday through Saturday are the only nights all four overlap. Spirit runs a limited menu during its last hour of service on those nights.

The schedule only works because these aren't four versions of the same pie. Following the street from the lower end up, here's what each one makes.

Driftwood Oven, 3615 Butler: sourdough, and a dance floor once a month

Driftwood Oven is a sourdough pizzeria and bakery. After renovations it reopened in February 2025. Its posted hours are the longest of the group, from 8 a.m. on weekends through 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and it's closed Mondays.

According to City Paper's September 2026 article, it has also run, since March, Driftwood After Dark on the first Saturday of each month. The tables come out and turntables go in for a house and UK garage party that starts at 10 p.m. and runs, in the paper's words, "late." City Paper reports that the series is a collaboration between owner Neil Blazin and resident DJ Scuba Steve, with a guest DJ each month. Local house DJ Nolon played in September. Ricky Mawzlin of Jellyfish is on the bill for October 3. City Paper's writer found slices of pepperoni, cheese and white pizza ready to go during the party. There was also a cocktail special, the Pandan Express, made with Lawrenceville neighbor Secondary Story Spirits.

That makes Driftwood the one pizza place in the group with a scheduled late night. It happens once a month, on a night that's easy to remember.

Pizza Lupo, 5123 Butler: rounds in two sizes, Grandma squares in limited numbers

The Post-Gazette included Pizza Lupo in its February 2026 pizza coverage. Its own site lists 14-inch and 17-inch round pies, specialty pizzas, and Grandma square pies in limited quantities.

Lupo opens at 3 p.m. from Tuesday through Thursday and at noon on Fridays and Saturdays. Every night it's open, it closes at 9. It's closed Sundays and Mondays. Two sizes of round pie and a 9 p.m. close make Lupo the one on this list built for a full table on a weeknight.

Spirit, 242 51st Street: the Monday pizzeria

Spirit's restaurant side calls itself simply "Pizzeria." It has its own takeout link under the 242 51st Street address. Its menu, dated October 1, 2026, lists round and Grandma-style pizzas alongside salads, pasta, sides and snacks. Some pies are deliberate mashups. There's the Banh Mizza, and the Claw & Order comes topped with crab.

Spirit is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the same two nights Driftwood and Lupo are both open. On Mondays, Spirit is the only one of the four with a pizza oven going. Pittsburgh Magazine's 2026 dining preview also mentioned that Spirit's pizzeria has a separate entrance and a rooftop garden bar.

ippa, upper Butler: a food truck that stopped moving

ippa started as a food-truck concept founded by Jason Spore. In Pittsburgh, sisters Whitney and Lyndsey Pittman run it, out of a wood-fired container that is now permanently parked on Butler Street. Pittsburgh Magazine's May 2026 profile says ippa was already serving the public by the Lawrenceville Cookie Tour the previous December.

The menu is Tuscan-American street food. It has sandwiches on schiacciata, snacks and desserts, and 8-inch pizzas that come folded or flat. The most recent local report on hours, from Axios in June 2026, lists noon to 9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Sources disagree on the exact address. Pittsburgh Magazine's article gives both 5242 and 5241 Butler Street, and Axios uses 5241. Either way, it's in the 5200 block. ippa is also the only spot on the list with an afternoon window where pizza is the snack, eaten folded and standing up, more than the dinner.

The style still missing, and why it took a while to arrive

Line up the four menus and you get sourdough, two sizes of round, two kitchens with Grandma squares, and a folded 8-inch. The deep, crisp-edged Detroit pan pie is the one style on none of those menus. That's what La Grassa makes.

La Grassa is a Detroit-style pizza operation run by Eric Grasso and his wife and business partner, Hayley. Table Magazine reported on September 25, 2026, that it will open its first brick-and-mortar location in November at 5336 Butler Street. That space once held Chef Justin Severino's charcuterie-focused restaurant and most recently held LaVia Trattoria. The signature is a deep, doughy 8-by-8-inch square, cut so everyone gets a corner. Toppings include Calabrian chili cream, Sicilian pepato, pecorino and 'nduja, and there's tiramisu for dessert.

Grasso's interest in square pizza goes back to his childhood in Sharon, Pennsylvania. His family shared trays of Sicilian-style takeout pizza there after his soccer games. He started making pizza at home about 12 years ago. For the past two years, the Grassos have cooked out of other restaurants' kitchens, including The Vandal, to build a following.

Published forecasts for the opening have shifted over the year. In mid-May, the Pittsburgh pizza newsletter written by Dan Tallarico expected the shop to open "this Spring." Meanwhile La Grassa was selling preordered test-kitchen pies out of The Vandal. Pittsburgh Magazine's late-May roundup said it would get its Butler Street space "this summer." The latest word, from late September, is November. So far there's no exact day and no posted hours. La Grassa's Instagram is where updates have been appearing.

Two of the five businesses here, ippa and La Grassa, took the same route to Butler Street. Both built a following somewhere temporary, one in a truck and one in borrowed kitchens, before settling at a fixed address. Tallarico's newsletter put La Grassa's arrival in terms of geography. It wrote that La Grassa "will anchor the far end of Butler St," on a stretch where "every few blocks you're treated to another pizza shop."

What changes when La Grassa opens

Until La Grassa posts its hours, the table above has no fifth column. Two things are already clear.

First, the style gap closes. Once La Grassa opens, Butler Street will have sourdough, large rounds, Grandma squares, folded wood-fired pies and Detroit pans within one street's length.

Second, where its hours land matters more than whether it opens. Monday is currently a one-restaurant night for pizza along the corridor, and Tuesday and Wednesday are two-restaurant nights. A new shop that's open early in the week would change the grid more than one that adds another option on Friday, when all four are already serving. When La Grassa announces its schedule, the first thing to check is which of those thin nights it covers.

For the rest of October, the published schedule is the one above. Driftwood's next After Dark is Saturday, October 3, the first Saturday of the month, starting at 10 p.m.

At New City Pittsburgh, we follow Butler Street block by block, from Driftwood's end to the 5300s where La Grassa is setting up. If you're weighing a condo or loft along this corridor and want to know what's open within walking distance, and when, schedule a free consultation and we'll walk the street with you.