Much-awaited new pizzeria with star chef opens in north Fort Worth area
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Owners Elda and Emil Rata opened Acquario Pizza Pasta & Bar near Keller Town Center.
- They hired award-winning pizzaiolo Gimmy Piperku and brought in a giant Neapolitan oven.
- Menu spotlights Neapolitan pizzas, pastas, puccia bread and Italian ingredients.
KELLER
If one Acquario is a hit, why not two?
Owners Elda and Emil “Nino” Rata have opened Acquario Pizza Pasta & Bar near Keller Town Center, and it’s well on the way to matching the success of his Acquario Italian Restaurant.
After three years running his finer-dining Acquario, the Ratas decided to add a Neapolitan-style pizzeria in the same city for a simple reason.
“There was no high-quality, traditional Neapolitan pizza around here,” Emil Rata said as the first customers streamed into Acquario Pizza Pasta & Bar, now in its soft-opening phrase at 967 Keller Parkway near Rufe Snow Drive.
The Ratas went all-out.
For a chef, Acquario Pizza hired national award-winning pizzaiolo Gimmy Piperku, from Rome via Las Vegas and San Diego.
To bake the pizza, the Ratas brought in a giant Neapolitan oven too big for the door. To get it in, front windows had to come out.
Acquario Pizza took over a nondescript strip shopping center space. So the atmosphere is more casual pizzeria than upscale restaurant like the original Acquario, on the Keller-Southlake border at 8849 Davis Blvd.
But there is nothing nondescript about Piperku’s pastas or pizzas, some of the best in North Texas and comparable in the Fort Worth area only to downtown’s standout Bocca Osteria Romana and its Felina pizzeria.
If you haven’t tried Neapolitan-style pizza at the older local Cane Rosso chain or another restaurant, it’s soft, light, airy and known for its high, charred edges.
Acquario Pizza’s introductory menu offers a choice of 10 pizzas with toppings such as soppressata, prosciutto cotto, Calabrian chili peppers and cup-and-char pepperoni.
The pasta menu offers a choice of eight entrees such as spaghettis, rigatoni in vodka sauce, or pasta with beef Genovese.
Start any meal with an order of puccia, the round and light pull-apart bread from southern Italy.
An order of bread ($11) and eggplant Parmesan ($14) made a sensational dinner together or alongside a pizza.
Desserts include tiramisu or Nutella pizza.
(I didn’t get that far.)
Piperku is a former champion in pizza makers’ Caputo Cup competition.
“This is pizza Napoletana, authentic,” Piperku said. “Tomatoes from Italy, mozzarella from Italy, flour from Italy. ... Everything is like a street food that brings people together.”
He learned pizza making at 16 — “a little too old” by Italian standards, he said jokingly — when he moved from his small hometown to Rome and needed a job.
He found work at a bakery.
“I found out what I like: the raising of the dough,” he said.
Acquario Pizza Pasta & Bar is open for lunch and dinner daily; 682-647-6554, acquariopizza.com.
The original, finer-dining Acquario Italian Restaurant is open for dinner only Mondays through Saturdays; 817-431-8323, acquariorestaurant.com.
The restaurants are not related in any way to Acquolina, the Aspen, Colorado, restaurant building a location in Fort Worth on Camp Bowie Boulevard at Merrick Street.
This story was originally published March 3, 2026 at 4:27 AM.
