Ultra-hip pizza and beer spot opens in Quonset hut near Dallas' Fair Park

There's an eagerly awaited new bar-restaurant coming to the neighborhood near Dallas' Fair Park: Called Wriggly Tin, it's a beer + cocktail + pizza place rolling into a Quonset hut at 1906 S. Haskell Ave., where it'll make its official debut on November 1.

The location is a former Cajun fried turkey place which has received a loving, doting, you might even say obsessive, makeover with custom plaster walls, trinkets and art objects from around the world, and one whole side of the hut replaced by glass, for sunsets and maximum outdoor gazing.

The concept is from Jacob Boger and Aaron Garcia, the popular team who also own Small Beer Works, a brewery they founded after the closure of Small Brewpub in Oak Cliff, which earned a devout following among the foodie cognoscenti for its stellar craft beer and also for being, at one time, a platform for the cooking of acclaimed chef Misti Norris, before she opened Petra and the Beast.

At Wriggly Tin, they've partnered with chef Desmon “Dez” Coleman, who's logged praise for his pizza and burger pop-ups throughout DFW via his Hustle Town Pizza concept.

"Before we even tasted his pizza, we wanted to offer him the job on the spot because he is extremely charismatic and kind," Boger and Garcia say in a statement.

The pizza will be New York-style, and it's a simple menu they say is designed for high volume.

The name is a reference to the corrugated metal roofing – aka corrugated sheet metal, corrugated steel, or wriggly tin, a nickname from the U.K. military for the bumpy sheets used to fabricate quonset huts, which by the way are right on the verge of being a hot trend (this being the second Quonset hut spot following Quonset Ballroom in Fort Worth).

The duo began renovation during the pandemic, with fun updates shared on Garcia's Instagram page. That included custom painting of the pendant lights, and textured panels to buffer sound and offer a textural element. They didn’t want a standard paint and finish look, so they made a custom plaster to give the walls a stucco/adobe vibe — "the small details that might go unnoticed, but that’s what we obsess about," they say.

Beer will be from their Small Beer Works brewery, with five beers on draft:

• Hart: a light German helles lager
• Black Pepper Pils: a novel twist on the classic pilsner with spices and other aromatics
• Underdog American IPA: "probably the only IPA we’ll ever make"
• Ojo Moro: dark lager is an ode to pastries and beers shared by the Mexican, Czech, and Texan cultures, tasting like light coffee and nutty caramel cookies
• Bijou: tropical spritz blurs the lines between beer and cocktail: "The best cherry limeade you’ve ever had."

They may do a seasonal or special edition beer but the beer part won't be front and center.

"For us, the person and the occasion are what matters and we just want our beer to be a small part of it," they say. "Small hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s just gotten back to its right size. Wriggly Tin is our cocktail, wine, and pizza joint that also sells Small Beer Works beer. We want to be home to everyone, even if they don’t know or care that there’s a brewery out back."

"Wriggly Tin is just a small metal building in the big city trying to give the people of Dallas a place to relax and make themselves at home," they say.