Fireside Pies in Grapevine closes after dinner on Saturday. The Grapevine location was the last remaining restaurant in this series of pizza shops that had expanded over 20 years from Dallas’ Henderson Avenue to many parts of North Texas, including Plano, Fort Worth and Grapevine.
Owner Golden Tree Restaurants, which also operates Golden Chick, Jalapeno Tree and Texadelphia restaurants, said Fireside Pies never recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“While we worked tirelessly to maintain our standard of excellence and serve high-quality fare, foot traffic never rebounded to pre-pandemic levels,” reads a statement from the company.
Fireside Pies was founded in 2004 by Tristan Simon, one of the restaurateurs who reinvigorated Dallas’ Henderson Avenue with chef Nick Badovinus. The original Fireside had a tiny interior with a roaring hot pizza oven. The patio was spacious, save for the tree it was built around. People would line up outside, near the bustling Henderson Avenue, to wait for a table on busy evenings.
Golden Tree acquired Fireside in 2018. Mark Parmerlee, president of Richardson-based Golden Tree, said at the time he was “tickled to have it.”
Indeed, Fireside Pies was one of North Texas’ beloved pizza joints. It made our Best in DFW: Pizza list, and The Dallas Morning News wrote in 2012 that Fireside found “the secret to a perfect pie: crisp, chewy crusts, made-from-scratch sauces and quality ingredients from local purveyors.”
Fireside Pies made pizza seem sophisticated, which was rare in Dallas, another Dallas Morning News critic said in 2007.
The restaurant went through plenty of changes over the years, with restaurants opening and closing and menus getting overhauled. In late 2020, chef Stephan Pyles collaborated with the brand to add 10 new items to the menu, like smoked tomato gazpacho and shrimp ceviche. He was not a founder; he was hired some 16 years later as a consultant, to give the brand a jolt.
In the past few years, the restaurant locations slimmed even more. The original Fireside closed in late 2023.
A spokeswoman for Golden Tree confirmed that the Fireside Pies brand is not being sold.
It’s possible that the restaurant could reopen, but “we do not have any current plans to open in the near future,” the spokeswoman said.
“We want to thank the community for their support and loyalty over the past 6 years,” the company statement said. “The decision was made with a heavy heart and was based upon business needs and the state of our brand.”
Fireside Pies is at 1285 S. Main St., Grapevine. Its last day in business is Aug. 31, 2024.
