Pizza Food Truck

Dallas pizzeria goes crazytown with food truck and new fried delicacy

Olivella's is headed for Fort Worth.

Olivella's

Dallas pizzeria chain Olivella's is stepping into uncharted waters with its latest venture: a pizza truck, which will serve a delicacy called fried pizza.

The menu will vary but will include favorites such as the margherita and black truffle pizza, as well as several new items, some available from the pizza truck only, such as a 10-inch fried pizza and other Naples street foods.

With fried pizza, the crust is deep fried instead of baked. Frying the dough is said to lock in moisture, which brings out unique flavor and texture. The release says it's "similar to a VPN-style pizza," referring to the Verace Pizza Napoletana organization that certifies pizza as being authentic to the Naples style. That's a big claim.

Ordinarily, you might expect a restaurant to start out as a food truck, then graduate to a restaurant. But Olivella's food truck is a special circumstance because it fills a need: It will serve as the official pizza concessionaire for Southern Methodist University's athletics events. It will be at home basketball and football games and other sporting events, starting on September 12, at SMU's game against University of North Texas. It will be located on the Boulevard on the Hill behind the south end zone.

In addition to the above-mentioned fried pizza, menu items include arancini, aka balled risotto fried with bread crumbs, aka fried rice balls, served with garlic dipping sauce; zeppole, aka fried doughnut holes served with a Nutella dipping sauce; and chocolate salami, which is chocolate rolled up in a salami-like tube with various texture-adding ingredients and served sliced with mascarpone on top.

Each of the pizza truck menu items are designed by namesake Salvatore Olivella, the great-grandson of the founder of Trianon in Naples, Italy, and of the third oldest pizza family from Naples.

"Guided by the old family’s trove of traditional recipes, we're able to bring the authentic Italian street food experience to our customers in Texas," says Olivella's owner Charlie Green in a release.

Olivella's Pizza Truck will be equipped with a wood-burning oven for its Neapolitan and Roman-style pizzas, which will be available for private events and catering. The wood-burning oven is 4,300 pounds and was shipped from Italy, where it was built, as is often the case with Italian ovens that come to the United States.

In June, Olivella's signed a new lease to expand to the Village at Camp Bowie in Fort Worth at the end of 2015.

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Restaurant closure

Beloved Bishop Arts Japanese restaurant Zen Sushi closes after 20 years

Zen Sushi/Facebook

After two decades Zen exits Bishop Arts

From the ever-evolving Bishop Arts District in Dallas comes news of another longtime restaurant closing: Zen Sushi, which served modern Japanese fare at 380 W. 7th St. in Oak Cliff for 20 years, shuttered without fanfare following Halloween dinner.

D Magazine was the first to report the closure.

Zen Sushi owner and chef Michelle Carpenter earned a national reputation after opening the restaurant in 2007. She was Dallas' first female sushi chef, the first woman to own and operate a sushi restaurant in the city, and one of the first to offer vegan sushi, years before plant-based dining became a major trend.

In a 2013 Ask Me Anything (AMA) discussion on Reddit, she also said that she invented the popular caterpillar roll — an eel and cucumber-stuffed roll topped with avocado. In the thread, she defended the less traditional approach, saying:

I have to pay the rent. I try to offer something for everyone, for varying levels and preferences. I personally don't like it, but [salmon and cream cheese] is a best-selling roll. There is place for the Philly Roll. I met the Master Itamae that invented this roll, and he is the much more traditional than I am. But he understood his audience and it took me a while to understand my audience."

Carpenter trained for years in San Diego beginning in the 1980s to become an itamae, or master sushi chef, and helped to pioneer the New American Japanese food movement by integrating Texas flavors into her sushi, rolls, and cuisine, as CultureMap has reported.

In 2023, while still operating Zen, Carpenter opened Restaurant Beatrice in Oak Cliff, taking over a beautifully repurposed old home and drawing on the Cajun side of her ancestry for the menu. Restaurant Beatrice was named a 2023 James Beard Award semifinalist in the Best New Restaurant category, just nine months after opening.

In June 2026, Carpenter closed the acclaimed Beatrice primarily because she was suffering a brain tumor. "I can’t do recovery and run Beatrice," she said then. She didn't want to give anything less than 100 percent to her work.

Zen Sushi remained open at that time, CultureMap reported.

In a November 5 story, D Magazine says Zen's closing also is largely related to Carpenter's recovery from brain tumor removal surgery. She is about 80 percent of the way through her recovery, and her condition has improved, according to the magazine. Still, Carpenter opted not to renew her lease this month. She wasn't forced out and could have stayed, but after 20 years, she felt it was a "natural conclusion." She also felt it was better to prioritize her recovery.

And that choice could leave the door open for more culinary achievements. Notes D, "Carpenter has an idea in mind for what she calls a 'legacy' restaurant to open when she is operating at 100 percent ... 'I’ve got one more restaurant in me, and this is beyond Beatrice and Zen.'"

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