Take a wood-fired pizzeria. Add a famous Texas chef. Now it’s an Italian dinner house
The company that brought Fletcher’s Corny Dogs to your neighborhood now brings honored Texas chef Stephan Pyles’ cooking.
The Fireside Pies pizza restaurants will feature a special Pyles menu beginning Sept. 30 in Grapevine and Oct. 1 in Fort Worth, including some dishes that aren’t pizzas.
It’s a new twist for the Richardson-based restaurant company that also includes Golden Chick, which rescued the State Fair of Texas’ signature corny dogs to serve at chicken stands with the fair cut back to a drive-thru this year.
Fireside Pies will launch two entrees on a “Fireside by Pyles” menu.
A salmon fillet with butternut squash-mascarpone polenta sounds like it could have been off the menu at Pyles’ former namesake restaurant.
The same goes for a braised beef chipotle short rib platter with pappardelle.
The restaurants, 2949 Crockett St. in Fort Worth and 1285 S. Main St. in Grapevine, also will serve four pizza variations: a sausage-onion-chile Vietnamese pizza on crispy rice paper, a chicken- or cauliflower-crust pizza with a choice of toppings, or a tlayua, a “Oaxacan pizza” with black beans and avocado on a flour tortilla.
For dessert, there’s a chocolate layer Maker’s Mark bourbon cake.
For appetizers, Pyles came up with a pecan-smoked gazpacho, shrimp ceviche and a pea salad with bacon and prosciutto.
It’s all a way to drum up new customers for Fireside, known for wood-fired pizzas but less known for its all-around menu.
It’s also a place for Pyles to consult after he closed his most recent Dallas restaurant, Flora Street Cafe, in January.
In a press release, Pyles said he and Golden Chick-Fireside owner Mark Parmalee have been friends 25 years and always wanted to collaborate.
Fireside culinary chief Joe Bozarth said the combination helps Fireside appeal to new customers.
Fireside Pies is “often mislabeled as a pizza joint,” Bozarth said in a news release.
(That might be because the name of the restaurant is “Pies.”)
“Fireside by Pyles” helps by “showcasing a wide array of international cuisine,” Bozarth was quoted as saying.
Fireside, in its 10th year in Crockett Row, switched its name back in 2017 after a brief turn under different owners and cnefs under the name Thirteen Pies.
The Fort Worth location has always had a broader menu of pastas and Italian dishes than other locations.
With the closing of Taverna by Lombardi downtown and also of upscale neighbor La Piazza, Fireside joins Campisi’s Restaurant, Cane Rosso, Grimaldi’s, Mancuso’s, Olivella’s, Piattello Italian Kitchen and Zoli’s among the city’s larger and more well-rounded Italian restaurants.
Fireside Pies Fort Worth and Grapevine locations are open for dinner Mondays through Thursdays, lunch and dinner Fridays through Sundays; 817-769-3590, 817-416-1285.
The company also has four Dallas and Plano locations.
The parent company, Golden Tree Restaurants, made headlines earlier this month by buying the unsold Fletcher’s Corny Dogs from the State Fair and selling them for $5 each at Golden Chick locations.
The company also owns Texadelphia, Heff’s Burgers and eight other restaurant brands.
