What: “Dan’s All Season” pizza
Where: Papa Dan’s Pizza and Pasta, 73011 Country Club Drive, Suite F, Palm Desert
How much: $25.95 for small, as shown
Contact: 760-568-3267; papadanspalmdesert.com
Why: It’s one of the valley’s better pizzas.
Opening a restaurant is hard. I’m beginning to think that re-opening a restaurant is even harder.
In the early morning hours of April 14, 2024, a woman broke into a business in the Plaza de Monterey shopping center, and started a fire. The blaze completely destroyed the building, which housed multiple businesses—including Papa Dan’s Pizza and Pasta, a Palm Desert institution since 1984.
Owner Ira Mosley decided to reopen Papa Dan’s in an existing building on the other side of Plaza de Monterey, and expressed optimism about re-opening relatively soon.
“There’s no hesitation in getting it open by October,” he told the Independent shortly after the fire.
We checked in with Mosley in September 2024, and he said he hoped to be serving customers again by Thanksgiving. That didn’t happen. In May 2025, we reported that Mosley was hoping to open by the end of the summer. That didn’t happen, either. Then an announcement on the Papa Dan’s Facebook page expressed hope for a fall 2025 opening. Nope. (Mosley told The Desert Sun the delays were due, in part, to repeated county fire department inspections of the fire-suppression system.)
Finally, on March 16, Papa Dan’s reopened … just one month before H&H Bagels opened in the brand-new building where Papa Dan’s once stood.
After being closed for 23 months and settling into a new space, any restaurant is going to need to work out some kinks—and such has been the case at Papa Dan’s, as you know if you’ve perused any of the review websites. On a recent visit with my colleague Kevin, I ordered the “Dan’s All Season” pizza, with sausage, pepperoni, salami, tomato, red onions, mushrooms, Parmesan and both Buffalo and regular mozzarella. You’ll note this pizza doesn’t include bell peppers, because I am not a fan—but the pizza I received was covered with them.
I told our server; after an apology and a bit of a wait, the proper pizza arrived—and it was one of the best I’ve had in the Coachella Valley.
Ignore the impatient idiots on Yelp. Go support Papa Dan’s.
