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    Tastemaker Awards

    9 top new pizza restaurants in Dallas vie for best pie in town

    Teresa Gubbins
    Apr 11, 2022 | 6:00 am
    Crust Pizza Co pizza
    Today's theme: pizza.
    Photo by Dillan Juul

    CultureMap Dallas brings back its Tastemaker Awards, an annual celebration shining a light on the city's top culinary talent. It begins with a 10-part editorial series, profiling all of those nominated for an award in categories such as Neighborhood Restaurant of the Year, Bar of the Year, and Rising Star Chef. Check out our page with all the nominees, voted on by a panel of judges consisting of former CultureMap Tastemaker Award winners and local F&B experts.

     

    It'll culminate in a party on May 12 at Fashion Industry Gallery, emceed by comedian CJ Starr, where attendees get to dine on bites from nominated restaurants and find out who the winners are in all the categories. (Tickets are on sale here.)

     

    This entry is our Wild Card, a category that changes every year depending on what's hot. In 2022, that's pizza. It was a year that saw more than a dozen new pizza concepts open, tossing out all varieties and bringing an unprecedented array of styles and options that show how magnificently Dallas' pizza scene has evolved in the last few years.

     

    Here are our nominees for 2022 Wild Card – Best new Pizza:

     

     400 Gradi
     Style: Neapolitan
    Downtown Italian restaurant from Australian chef Johnny Di Francesco uses upscale authentic ingredients such as San Marzano tomatoes in more than a dozen varieties such as the Supreme with pumpkin, arugula, pine nuts, and goat cheese. They ferment their dough and pastas for 48 hours in a temperature-controlled room. Entrees include branzino, chicken breast with pepperonata and nduja sauce, and mussels in a garlic-chili jus with chargrilled bread. Zero Gradi, a companion gelato shop, recently opened next door and another 400 Gradi will open in McKinney in 2023.

     

     Mission Pizza
     Style: Massachusetts bar pizza
    Pizza concept in Denton is available as a pop-up on weekends at Herf's Denton County Taphouse, and worth spotlighting because of its one-of-a-kind angle: It does "South Shore bar pizza," a crispy, cheesy style that originated in the bars of the South Shore of Massachusetts where founder Steve North grew up. It's a rich pie with a crisp, buttery, almost biscuity crust; crushed tomato sauce; and cheddar cheese, cooked in a pan like Chicago-style or Detroit-style, with sauce and cheese spread to the edge, so there's no exposed crust, and with crisp Detroit-style burnt edges.

     

     Mondo Pizza
     Style: Global
    Fresh, worldly take on pizza on Lemmon Avenue is from veteran Dallas restaurateur Yaser Khalaf (Baboush, Souk Moroccan Bistro), no stranger to pizza; he previously owned LA Gourmet Pizza on McKinney Avenue. This is a small delivery and pickup only place, with pizza crafted through his international perspective. Chicken Shawarma has sumac & herb grilled chicken, goat cheese, and a saffron-garlic cream. The Mt. Gyro has shaved lamb and beef gyro meat, feta cheese, tzatziki crema, capers, arugula, and kalamata olives.

     

     KillA Pie
     Style: Detroit
    Prosper restaurant specializes in Detroit-style square-shaped pies with thick-yet-airy crusts and crisped cheesy edges. Owners David Kazarian, Jay Clark, Shane Lambert, and Robert Wechsler worked with chef and cookbook author Peter Reinhart, tasting dozens of variations to refine their recipe. They make their dough from organic flour and put it through a 24- to 48-hour fermentation process before it gets rolled out and topped with tomato sauce, Wisconsin brick cheese, and toppings. There are also five creative salads and starters such as red pepper hummus.

     

     NEONY Pizza Works
     Style: Artisan New York
    Indie pizzeria is a new concept opening in Oak Cliff at 829 W. Davis St. from Alex Ham, a commercial photographer who previously owned a pizza place in Korea, and his wife Eun Young. Ham calls it "nothing fancy but good-quality pizza" — an artisanal rendition of NY-style pizza but with a lighter dough that takes 4 to 5 minutes, which means you'll get it a little faster than you would a traditional NY-style pie. The toppings are pretty standard — pepperoni, margherita, veggie — but the notable element here is the crust, which is aged 72 hours and is super-airy and crisp.

     

     Pizza Gianna
     Style: Dallas Thin Crust
    Lovers Lane pizzeria is from the same Nuccio family who founded Pizza by Marco/My Family's Pizza, a thin-crust neighborhood favorite beloved to old-school Dallasites. The pizza features their legendary sauce and trusted recipes, but with a more up-to-date business model including allowing for ordering and payment online. You can't beat pizzas such as the Augustus with EVOO, garlic, spinach, sun dried tomato, provolone, and feta, but their sub sandwiches including meatball and baked Italian with pepperoni, salami, pepperoncinis, Roma tomatoes, provolone, and parmesan are also divine.

     

     Pegasus Pizza
     Style: Neapolitan
    Pizzeria is part of the Restaurants on Lamar collection at Omni Dallas Hotel, named for the iconic Pegasus on the hotel's front lawn. Their pizza is Neapolitan-style baked at high temperatures and topped with organic tomatoes and "craft" meats. Pizzas are 12-inch, perfect for the market, and include a Margherita, a Carne, BBQ Brisket, veggie with artichokes, olives, red peppers, mushrooms, spinach, and truffle oil, Buffalo Chicken, and Herb Chicken with chicken and white sauce. The bar is wine-centric, with wine on tap, 10+ wines by the glass, and seasonally inspired sangrias.

     

     Motor City Pizza
     Style: Detroit
    Pizza is the foundation of this carry-out pop-up based in Lewisville with varieties such as a "Greektown" with black & green olives, red onion, spinach, tomato, and feta cheese, topped with Greek dressing. Owner Greg Tierney, a Michigan native who grew up eating Detroit-style pizza, is restlessly creative, offering seasonal specials with unexpected toppings such as mushroom gravy. In addition to the thick Detroit-style crust, he also makes some with a traditional-style crust, for those that are not deep dish fans.

     

     PT Neighborhood Pizza
     Style: Artisan thin crust
    Offshoot of Dallas pizzeria chain Pie Tap uses a modern fast-casual service model where you bypass the usual counter-service and use your phone to order and pay. The menu bears a passing resemblance to Pie Tap, with a handful of pizzas plus sandwiches, sliders, beer, wine, and margaritas. They also have an option where you can get a slice and side, with a special oven that makes superior slices. One thing the two concepts do share is Pie Tap's pizza dough, which creates the light, crisp crust for which they're known.

     

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    Chicken & Waffles News

    Celeb-owned Johnny's Chicken & Waffles opens second DFW location

    Teresa Gubbins
    Jul 15, 2025 | 4:07 pm
    Johnny's Chicken & Waffles
    dallas.culturemap.com
    Johnny's Chicken & Waffles

    A restaurant dedicated to chicken & waffles with celebrity ties has doubled down on Dallas-Fort Worth: Johnny's Chicken & Waffles, founded by reality TV star Crystal Smith; her ex-husband singer Ne-Yo; and Karlie Redd (VH1’s Love n’ Hip Hop), has opened a location in Fort Worth, at 2707 Race St. #117.

    The restaurant opened softly on July 11, with an official opening coming on July 22.

    This marks the second location for the brunch favorite: AFter debuting the concept in 2020 in the Atlanta area, they opened a location in Dallas at 1326 Botham Jean Blvd. in 2024.

    Chicken & waffles, their signature dish, takes its cue from the famous Roscoe's House of Chicken & Waffles in southern California (although the dish originated in Harlem at a place called Wells Famous Home of Chicken and Waffles).

    Johnny's menu lets diners mix-and-match: You choose how you want your chicken and then a flavor of waffle, so you can customize your chicken-and-waffle situation to order.

    • Chicken comes in choice of whole wings, tenders, Buffalo wings, or a combo
    • Waffles comes in choice of buttermilk, pecan, red velvet, or strawberry

    Their other big signatures include mac & cheese which you can order with chicken tenders, fried shrimp, or fried lobster tail, for $29.95; and cocktails served in mason jars, such as bloody Marys, margaritas, espresso martini, and a strawberry lemonade with cognac.

    They also have entrees like Cajun penne pasta, brioche French toast stuffed with cream cheese, fried shrimp basket, catfish & grits, and salads like a kale Caesar. Most items are priced between $22 and $30.

    Operations manager Randy Lamp says that the Dallas restaurant has been such a smash — always busy, and especially on weekends, when brunch draws big lines — that expanding was a no-brainer.

    "We thought, we have this wildly successful restaurant here, it makes sense to open something in the area — but not right in Dallas," Lamp says.

    They scouted about 20 locations, but it didn't take them long to narrow it down to Fort Worth, where they opened at at 2707 Race St. #117.

    "Race Street fit a lot of same criteria as our Dallas location," Lamp says. "It's centrally located but it's not in a saturated retail area, and that is to our benefit. We are careful in how we choose our neighborhoods and spaces."

    Lamp says that the Dallas location "showed us some things about ourselves that we liked learning."

    "One lesson we learned from Dallas is that you don't need foot traffic for brunch," he says. "People don't mind driving somewhere to get brunch. So a standalone spot with good parking becomes a positive. The Race Street location has a great parking lot right behind it, and there's no one nearby that's going to get mad if we have people waiting in line."

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