In Texas culinary circles, the tiny Texas town of Hico — found about 70 minutes southwest of Fort Worth — is best known for the Koffee Kup, an old-school diner that serves pie topped with skyscrapers of meringue and onion rings the size of small children.
But over the past couple of months, Hico has become home to another restaurant whose food is well worth the drive: BarbaCelli’s Pizza Joint, a fast-casual Italian spot in the heart of downtown.
Think of it as a mashup between Pie 5 and Cane Russo — it adopts the same counter service as P5 but has more of a chef-inspired sensibility, a la Cane Russo. Pizzas with thick, floppy crusts are cooked in a wood-fired oven and come with toppings such as chorizo, pancetta, spicy honey, and burrata cheese. There are traditional toppings, too, from pepperoni to mushrooms.
At least one pasta is made as a special every week, and this is where owners Shannon and Austin Odom truly shine. Both self-taught chefs and both college dropouts, they’ve spent years mastering the art of pasta-making, watching how the high-end restaurants do it, studying old and new cookbooks, and taking cues from the cooks in their own families. Any pasta you get at BarbaCelli’s will be on par with any pasta you’ll get at Tre Mogli or Piattello’s.
BarbaCelli’s is the second concept from this young, ambitious, and talented couple, whom this magazine profiled two years ago when they opened a wildly popular farm-to-table restaurant called Oma Leen’s in the nearby town Walnut Springs. It was at Oma Leen’s where the two made names for themselves for their incredible pastas.
Wanting to be closer to Hico, where they live, the couple closed Oma Leen’s last year and are planning to reopen it this fall a couple blocks over from BarbaCellis, which, like Oma Leen’s, is named after relatives in both couple’s families.
But in the meantime, there’s BarbaCelli’s, which offers a half-dozen specialty pizzas, plus sandwiches, wings, garlic bread, and, on Fridays and Saturdays, a weekly pasta special. The restaurant is a way to keep them busy until Oma Leen’s reopens, but more important, Austin says, it’s allowed them an opportunity to learn how to make pizza, one of their favorite dishes.
“We didn’t know what we were doing when we first started out,” Austin says, laughing. “But just like everything we cook, it’s been trial by fire. Maybe more fire this time — it is not easy. But I know we’re doing something right, because people are loving it.”
BarbaCelli’s Pizza Joint, 114 N. Railroad St., Hico, barbacellis.com
