New pizza restaurant Wayfarer Tavern is slated to open in the late summer in the heart of downtown Dayton. Mike Dew, a longtime partner in the Lang Thang Group, whose restaurants include Pho Lang Thang, Quan Hapa and The Hi-Mark, is opening the restaurant, per a press release from the city of Dayton . The pizza style at Wayfarer Tavern is described as an alchemy of East Coast thin and crispy bar-style pizza with a Detroit-style caramelized cheese edge and cut into squares, midwestern tavern-style.
This hybrid pizza variety was created by Dew through years of dough testing, recipe refinement and exploration of pizza from Italy to Philadelphia to Los Angeles and all points in between. Get the morning's headlines right to your inbox with our newsletters Every Weekday Morning (The Daily LINK) Saturday Morning (The Weekend LINK) The historic Burton building where Wayfarer Tavern will be located was formerly home to several organizations and businesses, including Dayton City Hall, the city’s first Kroger grocery store and a movie theater. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Years of hosting home pizza parties with friends led to a successful pop-up event at Pho Lang Thang in October 2023. Subsequent pop-up sales consistently sold out within minutes of being announced on Instagram, which led to the opening of the brick-and-mortar restaurant. “I’ve always been passionate about restaurants in general, and pizza specifically,” Dew said in the release.
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