Y’all the Chipotle of Italian food has arrived and I’m in love. Guest writer @christenmmariee worked some magic and got us into the pre-showing at Piada Italian Street Food and it was divine. Piada is the latest addition to the Memorial Drive strip right by Memorial Park. Walking in, you might be confused because the decor looks remarkably like a Chipotle-clean wood lines, modern white lights, a wrap around line to the windowed counter….Clearly all these fast casual restaurants that are popping up everywhere *cough* eT Craft Burgers & Beer *cough* have done their market research and realized that people like to watch their food be prepared and they like custom options.
Piada’s menu is broken down into three categories: piadas (their signature wrap with thin crust dough), pastas, and salads. They also offer Tascas, light Italian sandwiches on thin crust piada dough, and seasonal sides. You can choose a meal from their preset menu suggestions from one of the three categories or you can create your own.
From the seasonal sides, we also sampled the Orzo Crunch with orzo, olive oil, almonds, sugar snap peas, sweet glazed pecans, currants, red bell peppers, lemon basil dressing and the Tuscan Kale Salad with kale, carrots, heirloom tomatoes, Italian chickpeas, and parm. All of it was fresh and light and so dang tasty.
Piada has a Italian Soda and Tea Bar stocked with some seriously delish sweet tea. All you Texans and southern belles out there, it’s for real and totally worth a try. We also sampled the Cannoli Chips, which are a crunchy interpretation of a traditional cannoli. It’s an italian cookie dusted with powdered sugar and comes with a chocolate chip cream icing. I don’t even like sweets and I liked this dessert. That’s saying a lot.
