House of Pizza Is Bringing Its Greek-Style Pies to North Mesa, Into a Space Already Built for Pizza

A new sign is up over the old Pieology storefront at 6951 N. Mesa St. It reads House of Pizza, and El Paso Inc. reported that the Greek-style pizza and sandwich shop is taking over the former pizzeria.

For anyone living around Coronado Country Club, the address is easy to place. The El Paso Times describes the site as near Coronado High School, which puts it on the Coronado end of North Mesa. The name on the sign has nearly five decades behind it. The kitchen behind the sign was built for pizza before this family arrived. Together, those two facts explain why this opening matters for the Westside.

A Central El Paso Recipe, Now on Its Third Address

House of Pizza started in Central El Paso in 1978 and added a Downtown location in 2011, according to El Paso Inc. The founder was Paul Rakas. In its 2019 Best of the Best coverage, El Paso Inc. wrote that he passed his recipes to his son Chris, who ran the Downtown location in the Bassett Tower with Christina.

Chris Rakas is the one bringing the name west. He told the El Paso Times that he owns the Downtown House of Pizza at 208 N. Stanton St. and will open the new restaurant on Mesa. Other relatives own the House of Pizza on Piedras.

Here is how the three addresses line up.

The style of the pizza is part of the family story. El Paso Inc. listed House of Pizza under Best Pizza in its 2018 Best of the Best, and that writeup traces the recipe to Greek-style pizza from the Boston area, where one of the owners is from. In the same piece, Chris Rakas summed up how he runs a restaurant.

"Good food, fairly priced, competent staff and a pleasant atmosphere are our basics to running a good restaurant."

The Downtown shop has its own personality. In a 2023 profile, KFOX14 said the Stanton Street restaurant serves Greek-style pizza and sandwiches, preps its ingredients in-house every day, and displays a collection of rare vinyl albums. The Mesa location brings that same family kitchen to an address much closer to Coronado.

Why This Storefront

Chris Rakas told the El Paso Times that he had been searching for a long time.

"I have been looking into an expansion for years now. I've looked east and northeast and west, and I saw that this Pieology location closed down and in June I called and everything lined up."

He gave the Times three reasons for choosing this storefront. Each one ties the restaurant to its new neighborhood.

1. The customers were already there. Rakas believes the location has a good fan base of people who are used to coming there for pizza.
2. Coronado High School is nearby. He expects the school to bring in a high school crowd.
3. The kitchen was already built. The space came with pizza-place equipment, including a brick oven, which kept his retrofitting costs down.

The third reason matters most. A pizza recipe from 1978 is moving into a room that was already set up to bake pizza. The family's recipe goes into a brick oven that was already in place.

Rakas also told the Times that economic challenges still weigh on El Paso restaurant owners, but that he remains optimistic conditions will improve. Moving into a space where the expensive equipment is already in place is one practical way to open in that environment.

What the Mesa Menu Keeps, and What It Adds

The Mesa location will serve the same menu, according to the El Paso Times. That includes the House Pizza, topped with a mix of meats and vegetables, and the pastrami sandwiches.

The room itself will look different from Downtown. Here is what Rakas described to the Times for the Mesa location.

• An arcade area with classic video games such as Ms. Pac-Man
• Possibly sports on TVs in the dining room
• Open seven days a week

The arcade fits the reason Rakas gave for choosing the site. A restaurant counting on high school customers from down the road is adding the kind of room those customers can hang out in after they eat. The seven-day schedule makes it an option on school nights as well as weekends.

Prices are part of the pitch too. "And we're very reasonably priced as well," Rakas told the El Paso Times. "I haven't raised my prices in three years. I don't want to price myself out of business." Three years without a price increase also goes back to his 2018 description of "good food, fairly priced." The new location is opening on the same principle he described then.

Where This Fits on the Coronado Side of Mesa

When Farah's reopened on Country Club Road, the story was a familiar name adding something new to the Upper Valley routine. House of Pizza follows the same pattern on North Mesa. An El Paso family name that began in Central and added Downtown in 2011 is now opening near Coronado High School, on the side of town that includes the Coronado Country Club neighborhood.

Our recent Coronado posts have covered its open land, including the canyon behind the club described in our post on Resler Canyon's December race and the rock formation covered in our piece on Thunderbird Road. House of Pizza is a different kind of addition. It is an indoor place to sit down near the high school, run by a family whose recipe has been made in El Paso since 1978.

Timing for the Weeks Ahead

Rakas told the El Paso Times he expected the Mesa location to open in late November.

The original menu is available now at the two older locations. The Downtown shop at 208 N. Stanton St. is the one Chris Rakas runs, and the family's Piedras location is at 2016 N. Piedras St. Once the doors open on Mesa, a House Pizza and a pastrami sandwich from that recipe will be a short drive from Coronado.

New restaurants are one of many things that shape what Westside homes are worth. If you own in Coronado Country Club and want to know where your home stands as North Mesa adds new businesses, the team at Cornerstone Realty can walk you through it neighbor to neighbor. Start with a free home valuation, and we'll put local context behind the number.