Campisi's Italian will be new in town.
But owner David Campisi didn't want to choose a glitzy new location.
By choosing the 70-year-old Ridglea Village shopping center, Campisi's can build a new location as familiar and comfortable as its original Mockingbird Lane home in Dallas.
Campisi said the family looked at both downtown and West Seventh Street but "wanted to be part of a neighborhood."
The ninth and newest Campisi's will open in November at 6150 Camp Bowie Blvd., adding a 5,000-square-foot restaurant, bar and patio in a space on the corner of Westridge Avenue near La Madeleine French Bakery & Cafe and across from the new Blu Crab Seafood House & Bar.
Campisi's opened in Dallas in 1946, serving the region's first pizza to soldiers returning home from Italian duty in World War II. (The first Fort Worth restaurants to serve pizza were Margie's Italian Gardens and the Italian Inn in 1952.)
"When we started serving pizza, nobody had any idea what it was," Campisi said.
Now, the restaurant is also known for its Italian-style strip steak, shrimp scampi, crab claws and other Italian dishes, along with oblong, thin-crust pizzas topped with smoked mozzarella, homemade sausage, salami and finely chopped toppings.
"We'll be the only restaurant of our type in that area," Campisi said.
"I think with the overgrowth of downtown and Seventh Street, the older neighborhoods in Fort Worth are underserved. We want to be part of an older neighborhood and a community."
The original Campisi's -- the neon sign still carries the name of the previous tenant, the Egyptian Restaurant -- is in Dallas at 5610 E. Mockingbird Lane; 214-827-0355, campisis.us.
Fort Worth's Thai dynasty is growing.
Thailicious, new on the West Freeeway at Hulen Street, is the newest and most elaborate restaurant from the families that also own Thai Select and Thai Rice 'N' Noodle.
Thailicious offers all the familiar dishes from other restaurants -- spicy chicken kra pow, coconut-milk panang curries, pad Thai. But it adds a list of chef's specialties, including duck panang, and soft-shell crab or seafood with spicy basil.
On a visit last weekend, the chicken kra pow and homemade coconut ice cream set new standards for Fort Worth proper, matching restaurants in Haltom City and Dallas.
Thailicious is owned by Chatchawee "Chatcha" Varapas with help from her Columbia University-trained daughter, Natchaya Thanpaisarnsamut.
It's open daily for lunch and dinner; 4601 West Freeway, 817-737-8111, thailicioususa.com.
Bud Kennedy's Eats Beat appears Wednesdays in Life & Arts and Fridays in DFW.com Weekend. 817-390-7538
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