Underground Atlanta Soon Gains a Pizzeria Serving New York-Style Pies With Caribbean Flavors

Pop-up Dolo’s Pizza is opening as a permanent restaurant in November along Lower Alabama at downtown entertainment district Underground Atlanta.

Owned by Alyson Williams and chef Yusef Walker, Dolo’s Pizza serves 12-inch New York-style pies with Caribbean flavors and ingredients. (Think pizzas topped with marinara, cheese, plantains, and jalapeños or pies garnished with callaloo, roasted tomatoes, and Jamaican ackee sauce.) Dolo’s Pizza previously popped up at Our Bar ATL on Edgewood Avenue as well as at Gilly Brew Bar in Stone Mountain before landing as a regular pop-up at Underground Atlanta last year.

Design plans call for the Lower Alabama restaurant to resemble an old-school pizza parlor with limited seating inside and a focus on takeout. The press release indicates the menu for Dolo’s Pizza should remain similar to the pop-up and include popular pies like the Matey topped with marinara, mozzarella, blue cheese, drizzles of honey, and jerk chicken, along with sandwiches such as dolitas created by Williams stuffed with a variety of fillings and served on buns made from left over pizza dough.

Dolo’s Pizza joins forthcoming locations of Atlanta Brewing Company, Dancing Crepes, and indoor-outdoor restaurant and karaoke and live entertainment bar Daiquiriville at Underground Atlanta. A 21-stall food hall is also in the works. The relocated Masquerade concert hall and Future Showbar, an LGBTQ-friendly restaurant, cabaret, and dance bar, are already open at Underground Atlanta.

Dolo’s Pizza

Underground Atlanta began life as a series of storefronts, restaurants, and hotels built along the railroad tracks paralleling Alabama Street near Pryor Street following the Civil War and was considered Atlanta’s earliest commercial district. Starting in the 1920s, and with pedestrian and vehicle traffic increasing in downtown Atlanta, a five-block stretch was covered over to raise the street level, transforming many of the buildings on what is now Lower Alabama into basement storage for businesses above ground, and eventually into speakeasies during Prohibition.

The below-street portion of the district, with its late 19th-century storefronts, was eventually abandoned until it was rediscovered and transformed in the 1960s into a hotspot for shopping, dining, and nightlife entertainment through the 1970s. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Lalani Ventures purchased Underground Atlanta in 2020 from South Carolina-based WRS Inc. and is working to revitalize the aging entertainment district by opening new restaurants, retail shops, and bars and hosting art installations.

Dolo’s Pizza anticipated hours: Wednesday and Thursday, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday, 6 p.m. until late.