Rocco’s Italian Cafe in Richardson, recently voted the best Italian restaurant in North Texas, will open a new location in Flower Mound this spring.
The new Rocco’s Italian Kitchen will open in the old Swirl Bakery space at 3634 Long Prairie Road. The menu includes hand-tossed New York pizza, homemade meatballs, pastas, raviolis and traditional Italian desserts like tiramisu and cannoli, according to a news release from the town of Flower Mound.
“We are an incredibly great service company and family company with really, really good food,” owner Willie Stewart said. “That’s what drives us.”
Stewart said his partner, Xavier Muniz, came to him during the Covid-19 pandemic with the idea for a new Italian restaurant. Stewart, 65, has worked most of his life in the restaurant industry and was skeptical at first.
“I asked him if he was insane, we were all stuck at home,” Stewart said. “I had three businesses shuttered during the pandemic. I tried really hard to talk him out of it but he convinced me that it would work because pizza is an easy product to deliver.”
Muniz worked in a small pizza kitchen named Rocco’s when he was younger, and after a career as a chef, he wanted to open an Italian restaurant with a name to honor his first job. Not long after finding success in Richardson, the business partners considered a second location and where they would put it. Stewart’s daughter and her husband and children live in Highland Village, and one day he was driving on FM 2499 when he noticed the now-vacant Swirl Bakery spot on what he considers “one of the best corners in Flower Mound.”
“I wanted to have a location near my grandbabies,” Stewart said. “We’re excited to be a part of Flower Mound.”
Stewart said the restaurant is aiming for an early April opening.
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