Pizza News

Trailblazing pizza chain Fireside Pies closes location in Grapevine

Fireside Pies

Fireside Pies/Facebook

A trailblazing pizzeria has come to its untimely end: Fireside Pies, the pizza chain that changed pizza in Dallas-Fort Worth as we know it, is shuttering its last location. The restaurant is located in Grapevine, at 1285 S Main St. and will close on August 31.

A spokesperson for the restaurant said that the location wasn't doing enough business to warrant staying open. It had been there for nearly 17 years.

"On Saturday, August 31st, Fireside Pies will be closing its store for good," the chain said. "We wanted to thank you for all the support over the past 20 years. Come say goodbye to us and our delicious food in Grapevine. We will miss you."

A statement from Golden Tree Restaurants, who owned Fireside Pies, confirmed they were closing and thanked the community for their support."It is with great sadness that we have decided to close our Grapevine Fireside Pies restaurant to the public, one of the brand’s original locations when Golden Tree Restaurants acquired Fireside Pies in 2018," their statement said. "Since then, we have loved serving the Grapevine community. While we worked tirelessly to maintain our standard of excellence and serve high-quality fare, foot traffic never rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. We want to thank the community for their support and loyalty over the past 6 years. The decision was made with a heavy heart and was based upon business needs and the state of our brand."

Grapevine, which opened in December 2007, was the sole survivor of a chain that at one point had six locations across Dallas-Fort Worth.

Fireside was founded by restaurateur team Tristan Simon and chef Nick Badovinus, who opened the first location on Henderson Avenue in 2004. Its amazing wood-fired pies, with billowy crusts and rustic high-end toppings, profoundly changed the face of pizza in Dallas.

But in recent years, the concept got bumped around by owners: first acquired by Dallas-based Chalak Mitra Group in 2014, then Golden Tree, owner of the Golden Chick chain, in 2018 — neither of which seemed up to the task of caretaking the concept.

One damning blow came in December 2023 with the closure of the original flagship location on Henderson Avenue — a closure that was symbolic, as it had been there for 20 years.

At the time, a company spokesperson blamed the pandemic, stating that they were "never able to recuperate lost sales or rebound back to pre-pandemic foot traffic levels."

The closure left the chain with two locations, neither, shockingly, in Dallas: Grapevine and Fort Worth, which closed quietly in February 2024.

Fireside Pies also faced an increasing degree of competition from local concepts like Cane Rosso and PieTap, as well as national brands like Modern Market. Pizza became a big trend and many new concepts opened, taking business away from established places like Fireside, whose pizzas in recent years did not match the epic pies of its early days.

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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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