Last month, we updated our guide to the best pizzas in Dallas based on our years of research across the region. (We like eating pizza.) But we wouldn’t have known about the newest “best” without a timely email from a reader. To be fair, Farina in Grani Pizzeria, in Richardson, has no media presence at all—not even a sign on the building.
That makes Farina in Grani not just a terrific newcomer, but a literal hidden gem. It shouldn’t be for long, though. The owners are working with the city of Richardson to finally get a sign up. If I could just advise the city on this: trust me, you want to attract people to this kitchen.
After subletting a small space from Communion Coffee Shop, Farina in Grani hasn’t added many of its own decorations or furnishings, apart from a TV that displays slideshow-like views of travel in Italy. A temporary sign is taped inside the front window. Maybe this is part of why, after the business had been open six months with little fanfare, I found the dining room completely empty on a recent Sunday at 12:30 p.m.
The menu is short: nine pizzas, one salad, and one dessert. That’s it. “It’s a short menu on purpose, because we want to focus on quality over quantity,” says Sonia Khan, who opened Farina with her husband, Maen Azzam. It’s a passion project for the two. Khan is the dough obsessive; Azzam loves to work the oven. Though Khan previously owned a coffee and gelato shop, this is the duo’s first restaurant.
The pizzas are Neapolitan in style, 12-inch rounds cooked very briefly at very high heat. The crust is crisp from edge to edge, with leopard spotting of char all across the bottom. Yes, it’s a thin and foldable pizza, but it’s not what some Neapolitan haters call “floppy.” At times, the outer edges hold an aroma of smoke, but they’re not burnt. The dough is fermented, but not to the sourdough-tasting lengths of some competitors.
On that first visit, I ordered two different pizzas: the Vesuvio, topped with hot Calabrian chile peppers and stracciatella cheese, and the Terra e Mare, with lamb sausage, garlic oil, fresh arugula, and sumac. (Even though its name translates to “land and sea,” there is no seafood.) Hot chile oil dripped from each slice of the Vesuvio, its fire living up to its volcanic name. The other pizza’s star was its lamb sausage: flavorfully meaty, well-spiced, and paired with generous amounts of cheese and greens.
Like so many new businesses right now, Farina in Grani started as a pandemic-era hobby. “I had nothing to do,” Khan says. “I started baking croissants, brioche, all those things from scratch. This is my favorite style of pizza, Neapolitan pizza. I made pizza for the kids one night. The first few times were flops, but we kept at it.” Then the hobby grew step by step: Khan and Azzam started making pizzas for family and friends, bought a portable Gozney oven, began serving at events, and eventually went into catering. When Communion was looking for takers for this small restaurant space, the couple decided to roll the dice. All they needed to move in was a gleaming new pizza oven, purchased from Italy, which Khan says is now her husband’s “most prized possession.”
The name Farina in Grani comes from Khan’s preference for using the whole grain in the dough mixture. “You’ll see the golden flecks in the dough itself,” she says. “If you don’t have a good pizza dough, you don’t have pizza, basically.” The couple makes their sausage and tiramisù, and imports their flour, San Marzano tomatoes, cheeses, and drinks from Italy (Italian soda brands are served instead of Coke; there is no alcohol).
Farina in Grani is an unassuming newcomer to a stretch of Richardson that is so full of dining and drinking options, a visitor could easily spend a day here. Communion gets that day started, of course, and would allow our visitor to get a little bit of work done. Local brunch legends Dream Cafe recently moved in, and Lockwood Distilling, with its mesmerizing pastrami sandwich, is a mainstay. At the end of the block, Oak Highlands Brewery opened at the start of June and brought an excellent new barbecue trailer with it. Long-running Indian shop Royal Sweets is just around the corner. The only flaw here is the ugly streetscape itself, wedged behind a highway and a large gas station. (If I were the dictator of Richardson, I would seize the empty building and parking lot at 509 Lockwood, rip them out, and plant some trees.)
By the time you read this article, there may well be a sign up above the block’s new pizzeria. Even if there isn’t, once you’ve had a slice at Farina in Grani, you’ll remember where it is.
Farina in Grani Pizzeria, 514 Lockwood Dr., Richardson
Read the media release here