As Texans, we can claim a lot of our foods as the best in the country. After all, you wouldn’t rush off to Idaho to indulge in tacos, and you wouldn’t buy a plane ticket to Florida to try some brisket. Pizza—another of America’s favorite foods—has never had strong associations with the Lone Star State, but a couple of recent “best of” lists are proving that is changing.
In June, 50 Top Pizza, an Italian organization committed to promoting the excellence of artisan pizza around the world, listed Partenope Ristorante, in Dallas and Richardson, in the number twelve slot on its annual U.S. pizza ranking. Owner Dino Santonicola was invited to both the national award ceremony, held in New York City on June 25, and the international ceremony, which celebrates only the top twelve pizzerias in each ranked country. That event is set to be held in Naples, Italy, Santonicola’s birthplace, this September.
The restaurant is best known for classic Neapolitan pies that are soft, wood fired, fragrant, and well leavened. 50 Top Pizza recommends the sausage and friarielli (broccoli rabe) pizza or the Neapolitan calzone with smoked mozzarella, ricotta, salami, and tomato, which it called “a small masterpiece.”
Partenope opened just six months after the start of the pandemic and almost didn’t make it to this celebratory moment. “Our only option was to keep pushing with the restaurant,” Santonicola recalled about those early days. “You open for twelve hours, and maybe three people walk in. . . . They were the toughest months of my life.” After surviving through persistence, the restaurant has now hit its stride.
In 2021, Partenope was ranked twenty-fifth in the 50 Top Pizza rankings, climbing to seventeenth and sixteenth in subsequent years, until it arrived at twelfth this year. The rise is evidence that hard work has paid off. “The pizza we make today is not the same that we did five years ago, when we opened,” Santonicola said. “It’s better.” After tasting the pizzas at the previous U.S. award ceremonies, Santonicola was inspired to make improvements.“The caliber of pizza places on the list is amazing,” he said. “You push yourself: How far can we go? How good can you get?”
Santonicola is “very honored” to be included on 50 Top Pizza’s list, which he says is like a Michelin star for pizzerias. “There’s a lot of great pizza places,” he acknowledged. “I get to say I’m one of those.”
Another Texas pizzeria, San Antonio’s Il Forno, was twenty-fourth on the same list for the second year in a row. Its pizzas are topped with house-made cured meats, such as coppa, prosciutto, and pepperoni. 50 Top Pizza notes Il Forno’s fast and organized service, diverse Italian wine selection, and thin pizza that follows the Neapolitan tradition.
The Infatuation, a national restaurant review site, also named two Texas pizzerias as among the “18 Best Pizza Places in America.” East Austin’s Bufalina tops the list, with a rating of 9.4 out of 10. Bufalina serves Neapolitan pizzas paired with natural wines, and a secret behind its success is its Stefano Ferrara wood-burning oven, which runs north of 900 degrees. Bufalina’s pies, each cooked for only about ninety seconds, are properly charred and slightly wet in the middle, a Neapolitan hallmark.
When Steven Dilley, Bufalina’s owner, first tasted a Neapolitan, in 2008, it was “a revelation,” he said. “I became somewhat obsessed with it. I started playing around in the kitchen, reading a lot. It’s difficult to replicate at home because of the extreme heat you need to cook it. . . . When we opened the first spot back in 2013, that’s when I had access to an oven every day and got good at it.”
At the time, the Neapolitan style wasn’t represented well in Austin. Dilley saw an opportunity, but the move wasn’t without risk. “The style of pizza is so different from what people are used to,” Dilley recalled. “Thankfully that ended up not being an issue.”
As far as what to order, the Infatuation praises the spicy red pie with double garlic, double Parmesan, and chile flakes. It also recommends the taleggio pizza, topped with house-made sausage, mozzarella, scallions, and the funky, semisoft cheese to those “in the mood for something a little less traditional.”
For Dilley, topping the list is “an honor” and good for business: he’s already noticed an uptick in sales.
Casual counter-service restaurant Gold Tooth Tony’s, in Houston, earned the tenth slot on the Infatuation’s list with its Detroit-style pizzas. Their creative menu includes a pizza covered with mac and cheese and another topped with spam and togarashi-roasted pineapple.
And when it comes to Texas’s rising dominance in the American pizza scene, crowd-sourced lists agree: on Yelp’s list of the Top 100 Pizza Spots, according to Yelp Elites 2024, Taste of Chicago in Addison, Urban Crust in Plano, 600 Degrees in Georgetown, and Dough Pizzeria Napoletana in San Antonio, among others, make appearances.
It’s clear that Texas chefs have mastered techniques from Naples and Detroit. Now it’s time to start workshopping what a Texas-style pizza might be like.
