Pizza News
Old-school mom-and-pop serves NY-style pizza at Dallas' Preston Center
There's a new pizzeria in Dallas' Preston Center doing it New York style. Called Yonkers Pizza Company, it's located at 8421 Westchester Dr., in a former Jamba Juice, where they're serving pizza with Jimmy's Sausage, garlic knots, and pizza by the slice.
Owner Tony Avezzano has a claim to fame beyond opening a pizza place (which is surely heroic on its own): His father Joe Avezzano worked for the Dallas Cowboys for 14 years as a special teams coach.
His father wanted to do a project with Tony so they bought a sports bar in Lewisville called Hat Tricks. Tony's father died in 2012 and he sold Hat Tricks in 2014, and has since worked as a booking artist at places like Lava Cantina.
"At the beginning, Hat Tricks had your typical bar food, but it evolved to where we started taking the food more seriously," Tony says. "My mom is a phenomenal cook and I love the food scene in Dallas, and just wanted to do better."
They added pasta and pizza, fashioning it after what Tony saw was being done in New York. He developed a recipe which ended up earned a following; it serves as the basis for what he's doing at Yonkers.
"I'm hesitant to say it's New York pizza, but it is that style," he says. "It's our own dough recipe, which we ferment overnight. The pizza is thin in the middle with a crust around outside that's crispy."
They sell their pizza two ways: a large 18-inch pie or by the slice, with straightforward and traditional toppings - but toppings that are good, like the famed Jimmy's sausage, from Jimmy's Food Store in Dallas.
They also serve sandwiches and meatballs from his mother's recipes - "they're the size of your fist," he says - as well as meatball sliders and garlic knots. They don't serve alcohol but they do have a signature grape KoolAid.
Tony is hoping to serve a need in a neighborhood that is lacking.
"I knew I wanted to do pizza by the slice, and Preston Center has the foot traffic," he says. "And in that neighborhood, there is not an abundance of old school mom-and-pop pizza places like us."
