"Ordinarily, with this kind of pizza, if you try to hold the piece up, the front is going to flop down and the cheese can slip off," Patrick Colombo told Dallas press last August. "We're going to try to achieve that Neapolitan crust but with a stiff base."
A restaurateur four decades in, and this is where his attention lives: the front of a slice.
From 1982 to 1986 he ran food and beverage at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, the years it earned Mobil Five-Star status. In the late eighties he co-founded Sfuzzi - Italian, arugula on the pizza - and it grew into a 21-store, $46 million national chain, named one of the fastest-growing restaurant concepts in the United States in 1993. By 2000 it was gone.
That year he told the Dallas Observer: "It's funny. I know sometimes you're full of your own stuff, but I just went to Chicago and New York…and I haven't found [a wine bar] that is gonna do the things that we're going to do." In 2002 he opened Cru Food & Wine Bar in West Village, about 1,600 square feet, and grew it roughly one location a year, without institutional financing.
On July 30, 2025, a majority sale of Cru was finalized. On August 7, Centrale Italia was announced. On August 31, the original Cru closed - more than 23 years, a month-to-month lease. By fall, Centrale Italia was open in Preston Hollow Village: "New York artisan pizza meets Neapolitan," from a Marra Forni oven burning gas, wood and coal, its deck rotating.
The regulars have settled in. "Consistent and ALWAYS perfect," one wrote this August. Chloe came with her sisters for her birthday: "AMAZING." Order the pizza. Pick a slice up and watch the front.