Pizza News

New pizzeria in Arlington lobs Chicago-style pizza and Italian roast beef

Mushroom pie from Chicago Deep Dish Pizza.

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza

A new take-out pizzeria is bringing deep dish pizza to a neighborhood in need: Called Chicago Deep Dish Pizza, it's opening at the Green Oaks Plaza in Arlington, at 4407 Little Rd. #610, where it will serve Chicago's favorite style pie as well as a few other Windy City classics.

Chicago Deep Dish is from Ashraf Ghousheh, a veteran on the Chicago-style pizza front who previously opened Chicago Pizza Las Colinas back in 2009 (which he sold last year).

"I was taking a break from the pizza business, but there's no Chicago-style pizza in this part of Dallas-Fort Worth, and I found this spot in Arlington that's close to where I live," Ghousheh says. "Pizza is what I know."

If all goes well with construction and permitting, he anticipates that this new spot will open in March or April.

His menu includes 15 specialty pies, each named for an element of Chicago culture. There's one called the Chicago Bulls with pepperoni, salami, sausage, and bacon; and another called the Great Chicago Fire with sausage, sport peppers, garlic, cilantro, and mozzarella cheese.

His pizza with Alfredo sauce, fajita chicken, red onion, bacon, and jalapeno is called the White Sox, while the John Dillinger has BBQ chicken, red onion, and smoked Gouda cheese.

He offers five vegetarian options including one with spinach and olives, and the "Sears Tower," with "veggies stacked high as the sky."

While deep dish is the trademark, he'll do a thin-crust option as well. He makes his own tomato sauce using Bonta Brand tomatoes and Grande brand mozzarella. There's also pesto sauce, alfredo, barbecue, and olive oil.

Sizes begin at 6-inch for an individual, starting at $7.99, and top out at 16-inch, with a basic cheese pizza going for $19.99.

Other Chicago specialties include an Original Chicago hot dog topped with pickle, celery salt, red onion, mustard, sport peppers, tomato, and green relish; and an Italian roast beef sandwich, sliced wafer thin.

There's also a meatball sub, Greek salad, antipasto salad, wings, garlic bread, cheese bread, and pesto garlic cheese bread, a sourdough baguette topped with basil pesto and mozzarella, with a side of marinara.

One thing that drew him back into the restaurant world was the post-pandemic trend of being a place that does delivery and takeout only. His location does not have a dining room or dine-in option.

"Staffing is still an issue these days, and this means that I can put my focus on the kitchen," he says.

pizza openings

Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

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