Darrell Byers
Even though Pizza Buzz has been in business for more than a decade, the family-owned restaurant hasn’t gained the same notoriety or popularity as other forward-thinking pizzerias — until recently, that is.
For most of its life, the restaurant wasn’t much of a restaurant. Its original digs in far north Fort Worth were barely big enough to hold a dozen people. Owner Jay Hansji operated it mostly as a to-go spot, specializing in traditional pizzas.
Over the past few years, though, he and his wife began experimenting with different flavors and combinations of toppings. The two struck gold with what they came up with: a pie topped with dill pickles and another with chicken tandoori.
Soon, local in-the-know foodies began to take notice and Pizza Buzz became one of the most posted-about pizza joints north of the loop. Earlier this year, the restaurant’s profile grew even larger when Hansji moved Pizza Buzz into a bigger — and more well-known — location: the old Chef Point building in Watauga.
Darrell Byers
The Hansjis reworked the building’s bones, expanding the dining room. They kept the open kitchen, allowing diners to watch employees make their unique pies.
With the new space comes a new menu. In addition to the popular dill pickle and chicken tandoori pies, there’s an elote pizza topped with corn, Valentina sauce, cilantro and chipotle mayo; a Nashville hot chicken pizza; and an al pastor pie topped with marinated pork, pineapple and chipotle salsa. In all, the restaurant offers more than 20 pies in both traditional and unique flavors.
Pizza dough is made daily, in-house.
“It took a long time for us to come up with the perfect dough,” Jay says. “A lot of back and forth, trying this, trying that. We knew we landed on the perfect dough when our customers started commenting on how much they liked it. We knew we were doing something right.”
The restaurant also offers Detroit-style deep dish pizza, wings, salads and desserts, including housemade limoncello mascarpone cheesecake.
“We’re able to do so much more here than we were at our location,” Jay says. “We have a bigger kitchen, more customers, a bigger staff. After all this time, we’re finally in the place where we’ve always wanted to be.”
Pizza Buzz, 5901 Watauga Road, Watauga, pizzabuzz.com
