Durham’s top chef opens a new pizzeria. Here’s your first look inside
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- Chef Tom Cuomo and Matt Kelly debut Dino's Pizza in Durham's University Hill.
- Menu features 16-inch New York-style pizzas, Italian-American classics and Buffalo wings.
- The restaurant channels nostalgic décor, aiming to build community with regular diners.
From the red and white tablecloths to the Tiffany lamps hanging from the ceiling, the new Dino’s Pizza in Durham feels like stepping into a memory.
Dino’s opened Friday, July 18, in the University Hill shopping center in Durham, taking over the former BB’s Crispy Chicken space, located at 3109 Shannon Road., Suite 100.
The pizzeria is the latest star in the Matt Kelly constellation of restaurants, joining Durham favorites like Mateo, Mothers & Sons and Nanas. Leading Dino’s is chef and partner Tom Cuomo, formerly of St. James Seafood, who worked in major New York kitchens like WD-50, Carbone and Parm.
At Dino’s, Cuomo said he and Kelly aimed to recreate the pizza vibes of their childhoods.
“We are a kind of a throwback pizzeria,” Cuomo said, standing in the finished dining room at Dino’s. “The goal was that nostalgic pizzeria I grew up with in New Jersey and New York, thus the red and white check table cloth, the wood paneling, the red tiling.”
Dino’s Pizza menu
All of the pizzas at Dino’s are 16 inches and built on a dough Cuomo tested out for months in the kitchen of Mothers & Sons. The result is light but structured, and you’re welcome to fold if you like.
“I call it crispy and chewy,” Cuomo said. “It’s a little bit of a thinner crust pizza, but it’s got a crisp undercarriage. You lift that piece up, it generally stays pretty straight, but it’s still foldable. Technically, I use basically like a New York style dough recipe, but I approach it from a more Neapolitan technique mindset.”
Cuomo said one pizza should feed two people, or three to four people sharing a starter.
Italian-American menu
Beyond the pizza, Cuomo said Dino’s aims to elevate the profile of Italian American food in the Triangle, which he believes doesn’t always get the love it deserves.
“Italian-American food, it’s very easy to do a mediocre version, but it doesn’t take that much more effort to do it at an elevated level,” Cuomo said. “I keep going back to chicken parm. A fried piece of chicken, tomato sauce, cheese, mozzarella, parmesan, you don’t have a lot of ingredients. And so when you’re only dealing with that few ingredients, like, you have to make sure that every one of those ingredients is perfect.”
Joining the red sauce heroes like chicken, meatball and eggplant parm, look for crispy calamari with fried cherry peppers, garlic knots, Caesar and Italian chop salad and rigatoni alla vodka.
Hailing from western New York, Kelly is a Buffalo Bills fan, which diners will discover via neon on the wall.
So Dino’s will also serve a variety of Buffalo wings and the Western NY delicacy known as Pizza Logs, which are essentially egg rolls stuffed with cheese, pepperoni and marinara sauce.
Dino’s Pizza drinks
On the beverage side, there’s a bright glowing soft drink machine with those iconic red plastic cups.
Draft beer includes Bud Light and PBR ($3.75!) and several from North Carolina craft breweries. Dino’s will also have wine, cocktails and frozen drinks, including Frose and a spirit-free strawberry daiquiri you can spike with rum if you like.
Rebuilding a memory
To make Dino’s feel like the old school pasta and pizza joints that inspired it, the restaurant scoured the internet marketplaces for all the crucial details. Stained glass lamps arrived one at a time, purchased separately from sellers on eBay and Etsy, each requiring its own unique wiring. The walls are covered with photos of the Rat Pack, The Sopranos and a Saturday Night Fever Poster.
“I walk in here and like, you know, I get emotional for sure,” Cuomo said. “For me, the nostalgia is not just in the design, it’s in the food that we’re doing, but it’s also in the overall experience.
“For me, would walk into these places with my family when I was a kid, and I would know half the dining room sitting there and had no idea that they were gonna be there that night.”
Dino’s Pizza namesake
The restaurant’s namesake is Cuomo’s nine year old son Dino, who is named after Dean Martin.
Dino’s the restaurant stands out in the Matt Kelly group by being the first with TVs and pitchers of beer, aiming to be a true neighborhood spot. Cuomo hopes its the kind of restaurant that feels lived in.
“I like the idea of, like, our guests becoming regulars, and us getting to know all of their names,” Cuomo said. “As an Italian American, everybody’s family, I’ve got so many aunts, uncles and cousins and grandmas and stuff that weren’t actually related to any way, shape or form.”
Dino’s Pizza hours
Dino’s will be open 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday to start, with lunch service to come.
For more information, check out instagram.com/dinospizza_durham.
This story was originally published July 18, 2025 at 5:09 PM.
