When Jessica and Jason Adams opened Vagabond Pizza in 2016, the couple brought lessons learned from a food truck and a focus on community to downtown Abilene.
“We started Vagabond as a food truck in 2012,” Jessica Adams said. “We were pretty new to town and knew we wanted to get to a restaurant eventually, but didn’t have the connections or the capital to start at that point. So a food truck was an easier way to get into the market, show off how talented Jason is at cooking, meet some good folks, and see if we had the chops that we thought we did.”
Jason Adams said his career began even earlier. “I actually lied on my first resume, said I was 16 years old when I was only 15 years old, and started working at a barbecue restaurant in Dallas, Texas. And never looked back,” he said. “My sister is also a chef, too. So it’s just what we do.”
The couple opened their brick-and-mortar location after three and a half years on the road. “We were able to convince a bank to give us way too much money to be able to follow our bigger dream,” Jason Adams said.
The restaurant now sits at 1056 North Second St., a space steeped in local history. “This block was the original livery stable in Abilene,” Jessica Adams said. “When we dug up some of the floors to build the kitchen in here, we found old horseshoes. And yes, I still have one in the office.”
She said customers often share their own stories tied to the building. “One really cool circle of life moment that we’ve seen is people that will come here to celebrate an anniversary that will stop and share with us that they bought their engagement rings here in this location, and then now they’re back to celebrate their anniversary.”
The couple said downtown Abilene’s growth has shaped their restaurant’s evolution. “We’ve lived by the idea that a rising tide floats all ships,” Jessica Adams said. “So the more things happening in downtown, the better opportunities we’ve all got for downtown to keep growing and keep increasing that energy.”
One way Vagabond has built its reputation is through quarterly wine dinners. “We’ll pick a region of the world and study that cuisine,” Jason Adams said. “What’s really fun is that we don’t actually set the full menu officially until about 4:30, because one of the cooks may have a really great idea at 2:00, and we may change an entire dish right before the dinner service starts.”
The Adamses credit their staff for making that kind of creativity possible. “Step one is get really creative and talented people and let them do their thing,” Jason Adams said. “We’ve still got some folks on our team that helped us open the restaurant. We don’t have a whole lot of turnover, which I am really proud of.”
Customers are a key part of Vagabond’s story. “That’s why we do this whole thing, happy faces and empty plates,” Jessica Adams said. “If it weren’t for the customer, we wouldn’t be here. We’d just have a very expensive hobby.”
She said consistency is what diners praise most. “We hear that time and time again that, you know, our products are always consistent. Our service is always consistent,” she said. “People keep coming back and keep saying it’s a really good thing to hear and feel.”
Signature items like the Lucia Pizza with jalapeño jelly remain popular, alongside seasonal dishes. “Right now our pimento cheese is on. Our Cobb Crazy Salad is on. Our lemon bar in a jar, one of our very first desserts we ever made, even on the food truck, is back for this week,” Jessica Adams said.
Jason Adams described the pimento cheese in detail: “It is absolutely not your potluck grandma’s pimento cheese. Our culinary team has developed what we love to call our angel biscuits. It’s a yeasted biscuit, so they’re a little fluffier than you would get just out of a can... a little creamy and fun and cheesy, a little acidic and tart with the pickles.”
The restaurant sources ingredients from across Texas and beyond. “Our list of vendors is pretty big, and it’s from we have a local guy that... brings us a basil... in a trade for a pizza every summer,” Jason Adams said. “Robertson’s Hams... make our bacon for us. Our beef’s coming from Heartland Beef out up in the Panhandle... the short version is we get the best we can and try not to screw it up.”
For the Adamses, the work is about more than food. “There’s so many little moments around here where we’ve gotten to connect with people to be part of their world,” Jessica Adams said. “Those little moments make my little heart swell... never underestimate the power of one good meal.”
Vagabond’s final wine dinner of 2025, featuring Argentine cuisine, is set for Oct. 29. Tickets go on sale Oct. 1.
To hear the full conversation with Jessica and Jason, press the link above.