Former Stephan Pyles Flora Street Cafe finds new life as an Arts District Italian restaurant

The former home to chef Stephan Pyles’ white tablecloth restaurant Flora Street Cafe will reopen this fall with new owners, a new chef and a new cuisine.

Luigi Iannuario, the former top chef at Frisco’s shuttered Da Mario, confirms he will lead the kitchen at the new restaurant at 2330 Flora Street when it debuts late this year. Iannuario says his partners in the ventures, Riccardo Ravaglia and J.P. Piccinini, feel confident the Arts District space will draw more consistent crowds than Pyles’ upscale Texas-centric concept.

“The draw is there and the area’s slowly coming back,” Iannuario said. The group is reconfiguring the dining room, cocktail bar and kitchen.

The menu, too, is a work in progress, though Iannuario said the cuisine will draw from all of Italy and will focus on straightforward preparations that would be familiar to native Italians, including octopus, agnolotti, cacio e pepe, veal, seafood –plus “a steak or two” since this is Dallas.

The only item Iannuario is certain he will not include? Pizzas. “Definitely no pizza,” he said.