The taco pizza from ZA, a new pizzeria slated to open this spring on Preble Street. Photo courtesy of ZA
The owners of Truckin’ Pizza food trucks plan to open a pizza restaurant this spring in the former Preble Street space of Slab Sicilian Street Food.
Maine natives Jessica and Brandon Tenney hope to launch their new restaurant, to be called ZA (referring to ‘za, the slang term for pizza), sometime in March. The couple, with 50 years of combined hospitality experience, launched Truckin’ Pizza food trucks and catering in 2022. They met at Boone’s Fish House and Oyster Room in 2014, where she was bar manager and he was the chef.
“It was always a dream to open a restaurant together, and we really didn’t expect it to happen this soon, but it was just an opportunity we couldn’t pass up,” Jessica Tenney said.
The menu at ZA will include whole pizzas and pizza by the slice; dishes like roasted beet and goat cheese salad, burrata caprese salad, and meatballs with Sunday gravy; and sandwiches that use baked pizza dough for the bread.
Jessica Tenney said her husband describes his style of pizza as “inspired by New York-style and Neapolitan, but with a more pronounced crust that has a nice crispy, firm bottom.” In addition to standards like cup-and-char pepperoni and margherita pizzas, ZA will offer more unusual twists such as cheeseburger pizza; taco pizza, with ground beef, olives, tomatoes, chipotle mayo and cilantro; and their signature What the Dill pie, with housemade pickles and ranch dressing, red onion, mozzarella, fresh dill and potato chips.
ZA’s beverage program will feature products from local distilleries and breweries as much as possible, Jessica Tenney said, along with a substantial mocktail menu.
The restaurant can seat about 60 customers inside, with another 60 on the patio.
“There’s a lot of beauty that we love about the interior, but we also want to make it our own,” Jessica Tenney said. “So we’ll do some aesthetic tweaks, but not a full renovation.
“We’re just excited to offer some great made-from-scratch pizza dough to Portland in that space again,” she added. “Even though our pizza is a different style from Slab, it’s still keeping that alive there.”
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