Pizaro’s Pizza

Heat, timing, and the family bench

Italian-milled 00 flour hits the bench before the oven takes over; Brad Bean, chef at Pizaro’s Pizza in Montrose, Houston, keeps that work tied to dough and timing. Nicole Bean, chef at the same station, brings a study of regional pizza forms to the pass, with Neapolitan technique at the center of her hand. Brad joined the family-run team in 2013 with Nicole, moving through the daily labor of the shop before his present work as owner, operator, operations director, and chef. Nicole’s pizza craft began inside the family lineage as well, then took a formal step at Academia Pizzaioli USA in 2019. The older thread begins with Bill Hutchinson, whose home experiments with a backyard brick oven led to tipo 00 flour, pomodoro pelati, and training toward Verace Pizza Napoletana certification under Peppe Miele. That lineage matters here because the room does not treat pizza as one dough wearing different toppings. Nicole has said her focus is “to create and maintain authenticity of each medium of pizza as they are specific to their region.” At Pizaro’s, that sentence becomes a working rule: Napoletana, New York, and Detroit each keep their own structure, pace, and judgment.

A bake measured in seconds

The Neapolitan work is the most exposed. The kitchen uses Italian-milled 00 flour and sends the pie into a wood-fired brick oven at 900 degrees for 90 seconds, a span short enough that hesitation shows. The dough has to open, blister, set, and stay supple while the cornicione takes its color. Nicole likes that pressure. “Neapolitan is one of my favorite pizzas to make because it’s super fast and I enjoy the quick repetition of it.” Repetition here is not speed for its own sake; it is a way of checking the hand against heat, order after order. The menu keeps Margherita close to the grammar of tomato, fresh mozzarella, and basil. Prosciutto Pie moves through garlic, lemon oil, and parmesan. Detroit Style Pizza asks for another discipline altogether, with pan structure, crisp edges, and consistency doing work that a 90-second bake cannot. Brad’s role across operations keeps those differences from becoming novelty. A pan pizza, a New York slice, and a Neapolitan pie all leave the same kitchen, but each style needs its own proof, cut, and finish.

The ovens in the open room

The Montrose room gives the ovens their place. High ceilings, hard surfaces, cool lighting, and an open kitchen keep the work visible without turning it into theater. The pass carries the rhythm of a casual Houston restaurant: lively sound, pies moving, the bench resetting, the heat holding steady at the center of the room. The building itself, a former Bobbit Glass space on West Gray, opened for Pizaro’s in 2015 with two jet-black Italian ovens and a larger footprint than the first Memorial Drive location. That move brought the family’s pizza work inside the Loop while keeping the same essential arrangement, dough made for the day, sauce and mozzarella handled close to service, and pizzaiolos reading the oven rather than surrendering the bake to a timer. The room is modern and light, but the craft is still bench-side.

Three styles under one roof

Pizaro’s matters most when the range stays disciplined. The house began from a strict Neapolitan pursuit, then widened into New York and Detroit without giving up the vocabulary of flour, fermentation, heat, and regional form. Nicole’s own signature work includes Sweetpea Pizza, while the Montrose menu keeps Margherita, Prosciutto Pie, and Detroit Style Pizza in steady rotation. If the next movement here is visible anywhere, it is in that continuing study: Nicole Bean still treating pizza as a field with rules, and Brad Bean keeping the ovens, pans, and pass aligned around Pizaro’s Pizza.