Thanin Viriyaki
Pizza Verde utilizes a wood-fired pizza oven for its tasty creations
When Pizza Verde closed its doors earlier this year, it wasn’t just the vegan community that mourned — it was everyone who knew a perfect slice when they tasted one. After all, the cozy, inventive restaurant, which opened four years ago at 5716 Locke Ave., on the city’s West Side, offered pizzas of such great quality, in seemingly endlessly imaginative flavors, the “vegan” label began to fade, leaving only what mattered most: truly great pizza.
For husband-wife owners Jennifer and Landon Cabarubio, the decision to close was gut-wrenching but, at the time, unavoidable.
“We started off the year solid,” she recalls. “But after mid-January, the economy started getting wild — tariffs, layoffs — it was clear there was a correlation to the drop in sales. People are struggling, and we understand that. We tried to ride it out, but it just kept getting worse.”
Thanin Viriyaki
Jennifer Cabarubio
Pizza Verde has always run on slim margins. “This is a passion project,” Jennifer says. “Not something we do because it’s making tons of money.”
So, when conversations about closing began, Jennifer thought that was the end of the story. But the community had other plans.
In what felt like a Hail Mary, she took to social media, asking if anyone would be interested in investing to keep Pizza Verde alive.
The response, she says, was overwhelming. “Ninety-nine percent of the people who reached out were customers,” she says. “Landon and I were just so humbled and touched.”
Within weeks, a half dozen individuals had signed on as partial owners. “It’s wild,” she says, laughing. “We have people involved who are all over DFW. One’s in real estate, another works in social media. They’re all people who genuinely love what we do.”
With new backers in tow, the restaurant recently reopened after a short hiatus, now with a slightly reimagined model. During the week, the kitchen buzzes with a frozen wholesale operation, shipping out Pizza Verde’s signature pies to retail partners like Reverie Bakeshop in Richardson. From Thursday to Sunday, the restaurant opens its doors again to the public.
The new lease on life means new menu items. Among them is a fritto misto, a plant-based play on the traditional Italian fried seafood dish. A new house salad comes with leafy kale and a housemade Italian vinaigrette. For pizzas, Jennifer recommends the Calabrese, topped with plant-based meatballs, chili oil, garlic, calabrian chilis and vegan honey — the perfect blend of sweet, salty, and spicy. A good way to finish: cashew-based cheesecake.
To drink, there’s beer and wine, along with housemade rosemary lemonade. Jennifer says they roast the lemons to add a little extra flavor and make rosemary simple syrup using their own rosemary bush.
In November, they’ll launch a wine and cheese night.
For the Cabarubios, the restaurant’s revival has been both humbling and inspiring. “At some point, I had to put my control freak aside and not see investors as a bad move,” Jennifer says. “The people who are backing us kept telling me how much Pizza Verde meant to them. These aren’t people who are looking to make a buck. These are people who believe in us and what we’re doing, and I can’t tell you how moved we are by that.”
Pizza Verde, 5716 Locke Ave., pizzaverdetx.com
