Rafael Nasr
Craft Pita | Houston, TX
September 2025
Rafael Nasr is a born and bred Texan, but as the child of Lebanese and Peruvian immigrants, Nasr spent his summers visiting his grandmother in the Koura region of North Lebanon, eating as much riz a djej as he could. As a young adult, he enrolled at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. A few years into school, Nasr opened a Mediterranean food truck to help pay his tuition, serving late night bites to drunk college kids. After graduating, he bounced around a few Middle Eastern restaurants across town before landing a job with Pappas Restaurants. Lacking fine dining experience, he went through the restaurant group’s management program, absorbing everything he could about leading a team and running a restaurant. Nasr went on to manage the Austin location of Pappasito’s Cantina for the next three years, overseeing a staff of 70.
In 2019, Nasr moved back to Houston with the intention of opening his own restaurant. In August of that year, Craft Pita was born. Nasr now has two locations of the fine-fast-casual Mediterranean concept, prioritizing approachable dishes and house-made ingredients, from customizable bowls to sandwiches and tacos. Nasr is also on the board of Plant It Forward, a Houston-based non-profit that builds and empowers a network of local farms that are owned and operated by refugees. With plans to continue expanding Craft Pita across Texas and growing his burgeoning consumer packaged goods arm, Nasr is committed to strengthening his team and his community, one pita at a time.
