MoMo Pizzeria & Ristorante

Located in Lincoln, NE

A successful Lincoln restauranteur and his partners wanted to build a pizzeria in a suburban area of Lincoln that had a lot of families and businesses but few non-chain food options. The owners also wanted to include space for another business in their new building, without knowing who the tenant would be.

MoMo Pizzeria was created to offer upscale family dining with a welcoming, neighborhood atmosphere. With the menu’s main focus on the wine selection and pizza, the building was designed around the bar and the brick oven, which was made visible by creating a large opening to the kitchen. The bar is surrounded by a half-wall that serves as both a drink stand when the area is crowded and a way to separate the bar from the booths of the dining area.

Partial walls and horizontal floating “cloud” ceilings create the feeling of intimate seating areas throughout the large dining room. One part of the dining room can be converted into a three-seasons room using a combination of roll-up glass garage doors. In good weather, the exterior garage doors can be opened and a screen pulled down, while an interior garage door can separate the room from the rest of the dining area or be lifted to let it be part of the larger area.

MoMo Pizzeria opened in 2016 and has been a busy neighborhood restaurant ever since. The tenant space was quickly rented out to a landscape company soon after the restaurant opened.