Wriggly Tin, a Spacey Spot for Drinks and Pizza, Blasts Off in Fair Park

Wriggly Tin, a new spot to grab pizza and drinks in Fair Park, is the restaurant of the future. Or at least the future as imagined by the past.

The restaurant is located in a Quonset hut that used to be a garage, but you would think you were dining in the reworked wreckage of a UFO. The eye-catching, curved facade of the building, the Southwest-inspired decor and mood music like The B-52s and Talking Heads give the whole place a retrofuturist feel. The artsy West Texas town of Marfa is on trend for design inspiration these days. Wriggly Tin takes this concept a step further, transporting guests to Roswell, New Mexico.

The patio is spacious and friendly for both children and dogs, with plenty of space for kids to play and dogs to keep their distance from each other. The servers are also diligent about keeping your dog’s water bowl full.

The cocktails at Wriggly Tin are a highlight, and the menu is helpfully split into “fun and refreshing” fruity drinks, “boozy and serious” classic drinks, such as Old Fashioneds and martinis, and a couple of mocktails.

We tried the Pink Cadillac Margarita (tequila, Tepetán lime, cane sugar, prickly pear) as well as the Pom Pamplemousse Mule mocktail (grapefruit juice, pomegranate, ginger beer). Both drinks were delicious, refreshing and photogenic.

Wriggly Tin also also has an in-house brewer, Small Beer Works, that brews and packages their beers onsite.

The food menu consists and pizza, salads and sandwiches, appetizers and desserts. We had the cheesy garlic bread as our appetizer and it was delivered promptly to the table. It comes with three sticks and is ideal to split between two people. Larger groups should plan to order more.

As for the main course, pizza seemed like the obvious choice. Wriggly Tin offers eight different kinds of pizza (four with red sauce, four with white). We kept it simple and ordered the cheese pizza and can wholly recommend their scratch sourdough crust.

Another forward-thinking element of Wriggly Tin is its service system. Guests order on their phones or at kiosks, and their food and drinks are brought to their table. They also don’t accept tips.

“We think the tipping system is unfair to employees and customers alike,” signs throughout the restaurant read. “We make sure all of our employees are paid so don’t you worry about it.”

This is a noble notion, but it’s clear the kinks are still being worked out. During our visit, our drinks and appetizers arrived in a timely fashion but the pizza (which was ordered at the same time as the appetizers) took almost an hour.

We reached out for some clarity on these hiccups, and owner Aaron Garcia was happy to provide some insight, apologizing for the delay and chalking it up to the growing pains of a new, successful business.

Garcia explains that the Saturday we went had experienced 90% more volume than the previous Saturday and 266% more volume than the average Saturday in January.

“Our no-tipping model is more difficult to scale,” he says. “We do not have the ability to overstaff with $2.13 an hour servers and then cut half of them when it’s a rainy day. This means we have to do our projections very efficiently and staff accordingly.”

His plans for the future of Wriggly Tin include working toward more of a fast-casual style and alleviating the pizza kitchen by introducing patio-only menu items.

“We know the service style is different, but we are trying very hard to listen to our guests and fine-tune the model,” Garcia says.

Growing pains aside, we were charmed by Wriggly Tin and look forward to seeing what’s next for the forward-thinking business.

Wriggly Tin, 1906 S. Haskell Ave. Wednesday – Sunday, 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.