Khanh Nguyen was eight years old when his family fled Vietnam in 1975. His father was a general in the South Vietnamese army and the governor of a mountain province called DaLat — and when the country fell, a communist assassin was sent to kill them. The family’s escape plan collapsed at the last minute. What saved them was a bowl of pho. The cook at a roadside restaurant outside the city recognized Nguyen’s father, fed the family, hid them, and helped them find another way out. They made it through the Philippines and Guam before landing in Texas. Khanh grew up here, went to UT law school, became a corporate attorney, then a software startup CEO, then looked around at forty-something and decided he wanted to make pizza.
This is the origin story of Zalat Pizza, and it is not like any other pizza origin story in Dallas.
Nguyen opened his first restaurant in 2012 — a Vietnamese concept called DaLat, named after his father’s province, named after the place that nearly swallowed his family whole and then let them go. He kept it open late and spent his nights talking to the cooks and bartenders who came in after their own shifts. He learned the business from the floor up. A few years later, he started making pizzas on the side. The pizzas got better. The pizza operation became the whole thing. He named it Zalat — for pizza zealots — and opened the first location in 2015.
He was also among the very first restaurant partners on Uber Eats, back before it was even called Uber Eats, back when Uber was still testing whether food delivery was a viable business. Nguyen saw it coming and signed up early. Uber’s own communications team has described Zalat as almost certainly the first or among the first restaurant partners in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. That kind of early positioning does not happen by accident. It happens because a former software CEO recognized a platform play when he saw one.
There are now more than 30 Zalat locations across Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin. Every employee at the corporate level gets full benefits, a 401(k), and stock options — including the people making the pizzas and washing the dishes. Nguyen has said publicly that he does not just want to get rich. He wants to build a pizza brand that lasts a thousand years. He researched the oldest hospitality businesses in the world and found taverns in England that had been running since the Dark Ages and hotels in Japan operating since the 700s. That is his benchmark. He is serious about it.
The pizza is the reason any of this matters and it holds up. Zalat makes a New York-style hand-tossed pie with a thin, chewy crust and 100 percent all-beef pepperoni — no pork — which makes it one of the few pizza operations in Dallas that observes halal standards across the board. The dough is made fresh, every pizza is hand-stretched, and nothing goes through a conveyor belt. Nguyen has said that without a conveyor belt, every pizza has a chance at failure or greatness. The consistency suggests they have mostly been aiming at the latter.
The signature pies are the reason people become regulars. The Pho Shizzle is the one to start with — chicken, red bell peppers, red onions, hoisin and sriracha swirls, topped with fresh basil and cilantro. It is exactly what it sounds like: the flavors of a bowl of pho, on a pizza, and it works in a way that sounds impossible until you eat it. The Sweet Revenge is the fan favorite — a sweet and spicy combination that has its own following among people who order it every time without looking at the menu. The Elote is the Texas move — street corn flavor, cotija, lime, the whole thing on a pizza. The Bacon Cheddar Ranch is the comfort order, exactly what it sounds like, unreservedly good. And if you want to gamble, the Reaper Roulette Challenge is a pizza where one unmarked slice is laced with nuclear-level heat from a Carolina Reaper. You do not know which one until you take a bite.
The SiRANCHa dipping sauce — a sriracha-ranch hybrid — comes with the pizza and has its own cult following. People ask for extra. People order it separately. It is the condiment that makes you reconsider what condiments are capable of.
Prices run roughly $14 to $18 for a large, which for the quality and the portion is one of the better values in Dallas pizza right now. They are open until 2 a.m. on weeknights and 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, which explains a significant portion of their customer base and why the late-night delivery numbers are what they are.
Zalat has locations all over the Dallas area. The original Fitzhugh location is at 2519 N. Fitzhugh Avenue. Find the full list of locations and order online at zalatpizza.com.
