This Kansas City business has closed. KS.City keeps its page on the record.

Description

Khalia’s Pizzeria opened in July 2022 as a resident kitchen on the first floor of Parlor, the East Crossroads food hall at 1707 Locust St.12 It was the second Kansas City concept from Theresa “Ting” Santos, who had opened tings-filipino-bistro in the same food hall in January 2022.12 The pizzeria is named for Santos’s youngest daughter.12

The concept was explicitly modeled on Italian Gardens, the Kansas City Sicilian institution Santos had frequented as a teenager working downtown in the 1990s: square pizzas, homemade sauce, and generational DiCapo family recipes, served alongside original dishes of her own.12 “I wanted to keep it true to the Sicilian tradition that Italian Gardens had — their square pizzas, the homemade sauce, homemade everything,” Santos told KCUR.2 Parlor’s own kitchen page described the menu as pizza by the round and the square, baked ziti and bucatini, meatball and sausage-and-pepper grinders, chicken spiedini, giardiniera, Caesar and caprese salads, and Di Capo Italian cookies and gelato for dessert.3

Ownership and history

Theresa “Ting” Santos is the owner.12 The Khalia’s venture was bound to a succession deal: John David DiCapo, who had run Italian Gardens Pizzeria and DiCapo Foods for roughly 50 years, offered to partner on Khalia’s on the condition that Santos also purchase Italian Gardens Pizzeria and the DiCapo Foods cookie business.12 Italian Gardens traces to a 1925 opening; DiCapo Foods was established in 1997 and the operation relocated to the East Crossroads in 1999 after the downtown restaurant closed in 2003.4 DiCapo stayed on as a consultant through the transition.12 Santos said in 2022 that she expected to operate four metro restaurants by year’s end — two Khalia’s locations and two Ting’s locations.12

Owner-biography conflict. Parlor’s own kitchen page and the 2022 Startland/KCUR/Flatland coverage describe Santos as having grown up in New York (Parlor: “grew up in New York, living among ‘the real-deal Italians,’” moving to Kansas City in 1995).312 KCUR’s February 2022 profile of Ting’s Filipino Bistro states she was born in the Philippines and moved to Kansas City in 1998.5 These accounts are not obviously incompatible (a Philippines birth with a New York upbringing would reconcile them) but no source states the full sequence, and the arrival years differ. Recorded here rather than resolved.

Italian Gardens succession outcome. Whether Santos still holds Italian Gardens Pizzeria (901 E 19th St) has not been confirmed by a first-party or press source dated after 2022. No post-2022 reporting on the Khalia’s or Italian Gardens ownership line was located in this pass.

Last verified: 2026-08-14 · Sources: Parlor KC kitchen page (venue first-party, archived 2022-08-12 and 2022-12-05)3; Khalia’s own site /menu (first-party, retired, archived 2022-08-31 and 2022-09-07)6 · menu_status: partial · Confidence: Medium-High for the item lineup (two first-party sources agree); prices not recoverable.

Historical menu as published while the Parlor kitchen operated in 2022. Not a current menu — the kitchen is closed.

Descriptions ceiling. The two first-party sources publish the menu as name-only (plus a small number of one-line qualifiers reproduced below verbatim: mozzarella on the baked ziti; crispy lardons and pecorino on the bucatini; “pickled vegetables” beside giardiniera; the caprese build). The Parlor kitchen page renders every item as an <h3> name string with no accompanying prose; the Khalia’s own-site /menu page was a Squarespace menu-board image with an empty <meta name="description"> — no textual copy to recover. Re-verified 2026-08-14 against the 2022-08-12 and 2022-12-05 Parlor captures and the 2022-08-31 and 2022-09-07 khaliaspizzeriakc.com captures. Additional per-item builds are therefore not carried on this page. Descriptions will not be inferred from dish names.

Pizza (square, Sicilian tradition)

  • Cheese3
  • Pepperoni3
  • Sausage3
  • Veggie3
  • Sausage and Pepperoni3
  • Supreme Meat and Veggie3

Pasta

  • Baked Ziti & Meatballs — with mozzarella3
  • Bucatini Aglio e Olio — with crispy lardons and pecorino3

Sandwiches

  • Meatball Grinder3
  • Sausage and Peppers3

Apps & salads

  • Chicken Spiedini3
  • Meatballs and Sauce with Cheese3
  • Giardiniera — pickled vegetables3
  • Sausage Cacciatore3
  • Caesar3
  • Caesar with Chicken Spiedini3
  • Caprese Salad — fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, balsamic3

Desserts

  • Di Capo Italian Cookies3
  • Gelato3

Pricing

No first-party prices are recoverable (checked 2026-08-13). Checked: khaliaspizzeriakc.com (domain does not resolve); the Internet Archive CDX index for khaliaspizzeriakc.com (11 captured paths, all 2022–2023; the archived /menu page published its prices as a menu-board image whose Squarespace CDN asset is no longer retrievable, HTTP 404); the archived Parlor kitchen page (item names only, no prices); Parlor’s current site (no Khalia’s page). The business’s Toast storefront record (toasttab.com/local/khalias-pizzeria-608-e-armour-blvd-apt-202) is Cloudflare-blocked to automated fetching and has no Internet Archive capture. Aggregator listings were not used. No prices are stated on this page.

Sources

Disputes

  • Owner biography: New York upbringing / 1995 KC arrival (Parlor, Startland, KCUR Sept. 2022) vs. Philippines birth / 1998 KC arrival (KCUR Feb. 2022). Unresolved.
  • Italian Gardens Pizzeria (901 E 19th St) succession outcome after 2022: unconfirmed. “

Footnotes

  1. Channa Steinmetz — “Sicilian legacy meats its match: Why this rising star on KC’s food scene was DiCapo’s pick to take over family pizzeria after nearly 100-year run,” Startland News, August 2022 — asserts: Khalia’s Pizzeria opened July 2022 at Parlor’s East Crossroads food hall; named for Santos’s youngest daughter; owner Theresa “Ting” Santos; New York upbringing and 1990s downtown-KC connection to the DiCapo family; John David DiCapo’s ~50-year tenure and his condition that Santos buy Italian Gardens Pizzeria and the DiCapo Foods cookie business; DiCapo staying on as consultant; four-restaurant plan by end of 2022. (Accessed 2026-08-13.) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  2. “A century-old family pizzeria is being passed to a rising star in Kansas City’s food scene,” KCUR, September 4, 2022 — asserts: Italian Gardens Pizzeria, operating since 1925, sold to Theresa “Ting” Santos; Khalia’s debuted July 2022 inside Parlor; Santos quote on keeping the Sicilian tradition, square pizzas and homemade sauce; DiCapo’s purchase condition and consulting role; Santos’s four-restaurant plan. (Accessed 2026-08-13.) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  3. Parlor KC — “Khalia’s Pizzeria” kitchen page (venue first-party; page retired, now HTTP 404; archived 2022-08-12) — asserts: Khalia’s operated as a first-floor resident kitchen at Parlor, 1707 Locust St, Kansas City, MO 64108; owner “Theresa ‘Ting’ Spencer”; owner grew up in New York and moved to Kansas City in 1995; concept named for Santos’s youngest daughter and drawn from Italian Gardens; full 2022 item lineup (pizzas, pastas, sandwiches, apps/salads, desserts including Di Capo Italian cookies); Parlor’s Instagram reference to @khaliaspizzeriakc. (Accessed 2026-08-13.) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17 ↩18 ↩19 ↩20 ↩21 ↩22

  4. Channa Steinmetz — “Emerging KC Food Star Sustains Legacy of Italian Gardens,” Flatland KC, September 6, 2022 — asserts: Italian Gardens opened 1925 by John Bondon; downtown location closed 2003; DiCapo Foods established 1997 by John David DiCapo and Anita Louise DiCapo; operation relocated to the East Crossroads in 1999; Santos purchased Italian Gardens Pizzeria and the DiCapo Foods cookie business; DiCapo remained as consultant. (Accessed 2026-08-13.) ↩

  5. “For Theresa Santos, opening Ting’s Filipino Bistro in Kansas City is an ‘homage’ to her family,” KCUR, February 25, 2022 — asserts: Theresa “Ting” Santos-Spencer born in the Philippines; moved to Kansas City in 1998; opened Ting’s Filipino Bistro at Parlor in January 2022. (Cited here only for the owner-biography conflict noted above. Accessed 2026-08-13.) ↩

  6. Khalia’s Pizzeria — official website, /menu page (first-party, retired; archived 2022-08-31) — asserts: “Khalia’s pizzeria at the ‘PARLOR’”; address 1707 Locust Street, Kansas City, MO 64108; phone (816) 875-4813; 2022 posted hours; menu published as a menu-board image (no machine-readable prices). (Accessed 2026-08-13.) ↩

See also

Categories

On the record — ks.city/registry/khalias-pizzeria · record updated 2026-08-14