Dornans Pizza

These pies are as fun to order as they are to eat.

// By Sofia McGulick

Is a summer visit to Grand Teton National Park really a visit if you don’t get pizza at Dornans and take it up to the restaurant’s rooftop deck to eat while enjoying the views? There are 10 restaurants inside GTNP, but it’s the Pizza & Pasta Company at Dornans, just outside the park’s main entrance at Moose, that is its most iconic eatery, mostly because of its pizzas, each of which are named after a Teton peak.

“It would be easier for staff if the pizzas had names like ‘BBQ’ or ‘garlic chicken,’ but for people eating here, they like the pizzas named after mountains. It makes it more interesting,” says executive chef Sean Dietz. If you want to match your pizza to its namesake peak, the napkins here include a profile of the range with peak names on them. 

Huntley Dornan, the CEO of Dornans Enterprises and the great-grandson of Evelyn Middleton Dornan, who homesteaded here in 1922, found a menu from 1997, shortly after Pizza & Pasta opened. “All of the pizzas then were named after local things, but not all mountains,” he says. In addition to the Mount Moran, Buck Mountain, Static Peak, and Teewinot, there was also the Teton Pass, Healthy Hiker, Grizzly, Alaska Basin, and Moose. Dornan doesn’t know when the pizza menu evolved to be exclusively named after mountains. “It’s not something we’d think about changing now, though,” he says.

On a busy summer day, Dietz says the kitchen crew makes up to 500 pizzas. Every pie is made by hand and cooked in a gas brick oven at about 600 degrees. They don’t make the pizza dough but do make almost all of the sauces, which include garlic cream sauce, pesto, and tomato. 

Aside from the Teton (marinara sauce and cheese), the most popular pizza is the Thor Peak. “We describe it to everyone as our meat-lover’s pizza with caramelized onions on top,” Dietz says. Dietz’s favorite pie is the Grand (sweet chili sauce, Canadian bacon, pineapple, red onion, Roma tomatoes, and crumbled bacon) followed by the Static Peak (BBQ chicken, smoked gouda, and red onions topped with fresh cilantro). The Static Peak has the distinction of being one of only two pies that has been on the menu since the restaurant opened. (The other is the Mount Moran—chicken, spinach, Roma tomatoes, and roasted pine nuts over a roasted garlic cream sauce.)
Pizzas from $9; open daily for lunch and dinner at 11:30 a.m.; 12170
Dornans Rd., Moose; 307/733-2415, dornans.com JH