https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2026/january/best-new-restaurants/

It has been nearly six years since the coronavirus pandemic began, but diners are still benefiting from the bored home hobbyists who turned to baking sourdough, designing desserts, and otherwise leveling up their lockdown cooking. Take Maen Azzam and Sonia Khan, the married couple who says they had nothing to do that first summer. Khan was obsessed with dough, so she started baking croissants and brioche. “I made pizza for the kids one night,” she says. “The first few times were flops, but we kept at it.”

Soon, pizza night turned into pizza events for family and friends, then a catering business with a portable Gozney oven. Now the couple sublets a space with an Italian pizza oven that adjoins Communion Coffee Shop. Khan obsesses over dough, and Azzam focuses on the cooking. Khan says the oven is her husband’s “most prized possession.”

Farina in Grani’s style is Neapolitan because it is the couple’s favorite. The restaurant name denotes the use of whole grain in the dough, which you can see in the golden color of the crust. Khan and Azzam make their own lamb sausage for the Terra e Mare pie and import Italian cheese, tomatoes, flour, and soda. Their 12-inch pies are thin enough to fold, but the bottoms are perfectly crispy all the way through. You’ll catch a gentle whiff of smoke as you bite down on the outer crust.

Although the couple has expanded their hobby into a full-time restaurant, Farina in Grani is still small. The menu is a concise set of pizzas with just one appetizer (salad), although the owners have added new desserts recently, along with seasonal pizza specials. Azzam and Khan would rather do a few things well than more things poorly. Mission accomplished. They’re serving some of the best pizza in the region.