Bufalina Opens New York-Style Pizzeria in East Austin This Week

Neapolitan pizza restaurant Bufalina is opening its new pizza restaurant this week. Palm Pizza will debut at 1701 East Cesar Chavez Street in the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood starting on Thursday, October 26 for takeout orders only.

Palm focuses on New York-style pizza, which means thin-crust pies with large slices cooked in gas ovens (as opposed to Bufalina’s wood-fired Neapolitan pies), all topped with basil, parmesan, olive oil, and Sicilian oregano. Since the restaurant is opening for limited service, this means a limited menu. Expect pies like the cheese with mozzarella and tomato sauce; the pepperoni; red pies with either tomato sauce and nutritional yeast or parmesan, garlic, chile flakes, and bread crumbs; a sausage and onion; the fried eggplant with ricotta, provolone, fennel pollen, and black olives; and finally the namesake, the Palm pie, with stracciatella, mozzarella, and tomato sauce.

There are also chopped salads with chickpeas, heart of palms, cucumbers, roasted peppers, proline, soppressata, quinoa, romaine, radicchio, parsley, and olives, plus choice of serrano ranch or zesty Italian dressings. For drinks, there will be domestic wines (by the bottle and glass) from managing partner and wine director Rania Zayyat, beers, and nonalcoholic beverages.

For now, takeout orders can only be placed on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through its website for pickups. Owner Steven Dilley tells Eater that the Palm will only be open for takeout for the first three weeks, and then it’ll open for on-site dining starting on Thursday, November 16.

Chef Grae Nonas helped develop the menu and running Palm’s day-to-day operations is Clint Elmore, who had run popular pizzeria 40 North. Dilley had always wanted to open a New York-style pizzeria because he loves the pie style. Palm Pizza, which takes its name from the palm trees on the property, took over what had been the shuttered Mission Dogs hot dog restaurant, which closed in 2022.

Bufalina opened in 2013 on East Cesar Chavez, followed by Bufalina Due up in Brentwood in 2016, and then the original Bufalina relocated to a different East Cesar Chavez address in 2022.