As 400 Gradi grows across Dallas-Fort Worth, its Italian partners want you to know: 400 Gradi is not just a pizza place. That’s how the world has known it since 2014, when 400 Gradi’s founder Johnny DiFrancesco’s Neapolitan pizza was named the best in the world by the Campionato Mondiale della Pizza (Pizza World Championship) in Italy. In an interesting twist, DiFrancesco’s first 400 Gradi restaurant wasn’t in Italy but in Australia.

Nearly a decade later, 400 Gradi and its sister gelato company, Zero Gradi, have hopped across the pond to Texas. Husbandwife team Igor Stevovic and Nikoleta Plavsic are leading the North American expansion after spending most of their life in Italy. 400 Gradi still sells its world-renowned Neapolitan pizza, but Stevovic says it has graduated into an Italian restaurant with more depth.