Rich Hicks, the CEO of Reach Restaurant Group, a Plano Senior High alumnus and the man that brought us Mooyah and Tin Star, has teamed up with Chef Giovanni Mauro of Las Vegas to bring a distinctly different pizza restaurant to Plano. The recently opened Pie Tap location in Preston Park Village is the Dallas-based concept’s third location, and you must go check it out. Right. Now.
There is pizza on almost every corner of DFW. How is Pie Tap different, you ask? Chef Giovanni sat and chatted about the 30 years of research he’s put into making his own special crust. “I can count on one hand the number of places doing what we do, using natural fermentation to create the dough,” he said. “This is a process that died out in the early 1900s. We’re not talking your grandparent’s recipe; it’s the way your great-great grandparents would have made dough.”
Giovanni declared that he is a man on a mission to reinvent the image of pizza. When cooked properly in one of Pie Tap’s twin Morello Forni rotary ovens from Italy, his crust is light as air, yet still delicately chewy. With an emphasis on quality ingredients and a controlled amount of toppings, this pizza can even be considered (gasp!) healthy when compared to other pizzas. The yeast for making the dough comes from local strains and is not commercial yeast, which Chef Giovanni explained is only a single strain and is much harder for our bodies to process.
Pie Tap offers more than just pizza. Rounding out the concise menu is rotisserie chicken (half or whole bird), green salads, a few housemade pastas, appetizers (including carb-free options like meatballs and skewers of prosciutto) and donuts. Yes, donuts. These mini pieces of heaven are sugar coated and served with local honey and chocolate ganache created especially for Pie Tap by Dude, Sweet Chocolate’s founder, chef Katherine Clapner. Katherine also came up with the recipe for Pie Tap’s chocolate cake.
The “tap” in Pie Tap refers to both beers and wines. The Plano restaurant carries 16 local craft beers on tap and 23 wines on tap. Rich also called in mixologist Gabe Sanchez to create the signature cocktails for the restaurant.
An outdoor patio is due to be completed in time for warm weather, giving Plano one more outdoor option for cocktails with friends. The restaurant’s beautifully-designed interior (by PlanB Group, of course) is the perfect place to impress a date, but also casual enough to bring the whole family. Rich and Giovanni want Pie Tap to be your neighborhood hangout, the one that just feels like home.
