A popular Midtown pizza spot is under new ownership. Food + Drink on St. Lawrence Avenue is now DOPO Pizza & Pasta. Timing has had a lot to do with the restaurant's evolution.

"Food + Drink was started by Aaron Foster a month before COVID happened," said DOPO owner Greg Buchheister. "They did takeout pizza during the pandemic and last June he threw in the towel. I thought he had some of the best pizza in Reno, so I picked up the towel."

Fans of the pizza won't be disappointed. DOPO is serving up those same pies, as well as some new additions to the menu.

"We're going to add fresh pasta gluten-free pizza dough, some excellent gluten-free pasta, some apps, more salads, desserts, a wine list, as well as a few fun things," Buchheister said. "We home make our limoncello and we're going to feature a coffee liquor that we'll make with Ferino Distillery down the road."

Buchheister, owner of the Coffeebar cafes, says the place has always had a loyal following.

"We just won this amazing award from Yelp as one of the top 100 restaurants in the county, we got number 12, so it's been an onslaught of people coming in to try it," he said.

And that's helped with the challenges of running a restaurant during a pandemic.

"What we've learned is it's really difficult to run a restaurant in COVID," Buchheister said. "It's difficult anyway to run a restaurant, let alone in COVID, where sometimes you have a staff, and sometimes you have one person that can work. So it's been kind of a moving target, but we're getting better at it, learning new things with the influx of people coming in to try the pizza, so we're figuring out things really quickly."

He says it's a challenge that's been worth it every step of the way.

"I love it," he said. "I grew up working in restaurants and the coffee thing is early mornings, so to have an evening place to go and kind of settle in for the night, have a glass of wine, a pizza, a bowl of pasta is just kind of my dream."

For more information click here: https://www.foodanddrinkreno.com/