Austin Pizza Restaurant Bufalina Is Opening a New York-Style Pizzeria

Important Neapolitan pizza and wine restaurants Bufalina and Bufalina Due are opening a brand-new pizzeria focusing on a new style of pie. New York-style restaurant Palm Pizza will be found at 1701 East Cesar Chavez Street in the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood sometime in September.

The main star of Palm Pizza will be its New York-style pies, with thin crusts cooked in gas ovens. There will also be square slices, salads, and sandwiches. And because wine is important, there will be a small selection of domestic bottles and glasses. Then there will be beer and nonalcoholic drinks too.

Bufalina owner (and Eater Young Gun ’14) Steven Dilley wanted to open a New York-style pizzeria because he’s a big fan. “This is a style I’ve always loved and have probably consumed more of than any other style,” he writes to Eater, citing his years living in New York. “It’s the style I eat most often,” and personally frequents Little Deli and Home Slice in Austin.

The name stems from the palm trees that are on the grounds, plus the planned aesthetic for the space. “We had already been talking about a ’50s Palm Springs/’80s Miami color scheme and this played right into it,” Dilley tells Eater.

Chef Grae Nonas has been working with Dilley and the team developing the menu for Palm. The chef had lead the reopening of Bufalina on East Cesar Chavez after it shuttered in its original location in 2021 and reopened a bit further east in November 2022. In July 2023, the restaurant’s sous chef Brooks Wilson became the East Austin restaurant’s head chef.

Running Palm’s day-to-day operations is Clint Elmore, a noted Austin pizza chef who had been behind popular food truck-turned-physical-restaurant 40 North, which shuttered in October 2022. Dilley notes that the Bufalina team has worked with Elmore often. And overseeing the wines is managing partner and wine director Rania Zayyat.

The East Austin location had always appealed to Dilley, especially considering it’s just half-a-mile away from Bufalina’s (newer) address on East Cesar Chavez Street. Originally, he wanted to open a wine bar, but then this pizzeria made more sense for the site. It had been formerly the physical restaurant of hot dog shop Mission Dogs, which shuttered in January 2022. When it was up for lease later that spring, “A wine bar there made less sense, so we pursued our other dream,” he tells Eater.

Dilley opened Bufalina in 2013, followed by the Brentwood location in 2016.