Mia Ava East Coast Pizza in Pahrump: New 2026 awards

A Pahrump pizzeria is continuing to procure more praise after another prize-winning year at a prestigious pizza competition.

“Our whole wall is filling up with awards now, which is awesome,” Mia Ava East Coast Pizza owner Gary Rurans told the Pahrump Valley Times.

Rurans and his wife, Catherine, own Mia Ava East Coast Pizza, a restaurant that opened in 2024. The local eatery features three pizza varieties: New York-style pizza, Detroit-style pizza, and a Grandma-style pizza. In addition to the pies, the establishment’s menu has plenty of delicious sandwiches and sides.

“The town of Pahrump has really been good to us and they love our food, which is a great thing,” Rurans enthused.

The pizzeria has earned many accolades since it’s been in business. In early 2025, Mia Ava won second place in the traditional division at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. In August 2025, Mia Ava secured a third-place win in the California Pizza Challenge’s traditional contest. Later in the year, the restaurant secured two first-place awards at Pizza Expo Columbus in Ohio, winning America’s best pepperoni slice and America’s best nontraditional thin crust New York-style pizza.

“Throughout the year, we won awards. We just kept going strong, which was great for us,” Rurans explained.

Mia Ava returned to this year’s International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas to compete again in the International Pizza Challenge, which its website describes as, “one of the most esteemed pizza-making competitions in North America and possibly the world.”

“To go into the world championships again, anything within the top 20 would have been excellent for us going up against the best in the world … we weren’t expecting anything like we did the year before. Then we entered four categories this year, and we came in the top three on three of them,” Rurans elaborated.

The Pahrump pizzeria placed third in the nontraditional division, second in the nontraditional Southwest division regional, and 19th place in the best cheese slice category.

“We would have been happy in 19th on any one of those categories,” Rurans shared about the new achievements.

Rurans and his team also entered into the Daiya dairy-free traditional division, which requires the use of vegan cheese, where Mia Ava won the third-place spot.

“It was more of, let’s put our feet in the fire, if you like, and try some different things,” Rurans said about the win in the dairy-free category.

Looking toward the future, Rurans explained that he hopes to open another location and added that the Mia Ava team will be competing at the 2026 Caputo Cup in Italy, another pizza competition.

“Our name is getting out tremendously right now, with the awards we’ve won and everything else,” Rurans enthused.

When speaking about the restaurant, Rurans also thanked the community for their support and his team for all their hard work.

Mia Ava East Coast Pizza, open from 11 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. seven days a week, is located at 1971 Pahrump Valley Blvd. For information about the pizzeria, its app and menu, visit miaavaeastcoastpizza.com.

Contact reporter Elijah Dulay at edulay@pvtimes.com