Regional pizza styles are spreading far beyond their native lands these days. There’s an Old Forge-style shop all the way down in Delray Beach, Florida. You can get Roman-style pizza in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. And deep in the wilds of Alaska, Wagner’s Pizza Bus, located near Fairbanks, plates up more than 30 distinctive styles—we’re talking St. Louis cracker-crust, Chicago deep-dish and the Quad City pie, to name a few.
Soon, you can add New Haven-style apizza in Garland, Texas, to that list. Matt Tobin and Josh Yingling, co-owners of Goodfriend Beer Garden and Burger House in Dallas, are gearing up to open Fortunate Son later this year, featuring the kind of pies made famous by legendary Connecticut spots like Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana and Sally’s Apizza.
“The idea was to bring one of those styles of pizza that isn’t already here in Dallas,” Peña told CultureMap Dallas. “We’ve got Detroit, we’ve got Neapolitan, but we don’t have New Haven.”
Related: The mystique and magic of New Haven-style pizza
Culinary Director David Peña is currently fine-tuning his recipe for a thin, leopard-spotted New Haven crust made with high-hydration dough. “It’s a little difficult to work with,” he said. “But it gives you a crust that will get crispy but still have a nice chew to it.”
New Haven-style pizzaioli “use really good tomatoes and really good mozzarella, and they cook the pizzas to a nice char on the crust,” Peña added in the CultureMap interview.
Fortunate Son will also offer traditional pasta entrées like chicken Parmesan, meatball rigatoni and clams with spaghetti, plus vegetarian and vegan options. And the Bourdain Burger, a double smashburger that’s popular at Goodfriend, will also show up on the pizzeria’s menu.
Tobin and Yingling started Goodfriend Beer Garden and Burger House in 2011 as a “neighborhood bar with bombproof beers, burgers and whiskey.” Peña is also Goodfriend’s executive chef.