A new column by Vivanda Felice and Pipa Benoit, MoCo foodies dedicated to supporting and highlighting local food spirit and culture

Tonight’s dinner at Pie Hard Pizzeria felt like a movie. I (Vivanda) am glowing with euphoria, like I’m in a scene where lovers share a cigarette after sex. If I wasn’t in public, I’d be licking my plate and the Hot Honey Ranch off my fingers. My serotonin production is in overdrive, and I don’t think it was just the tryptophan-rich Street Corn Salmon salad. With each course, the stress of my day melted away.

The menu featured a first-time collaboration with their Mill Street neighbor, Gallagher’s Restaurant. As I took the first bite of the Chicken Parmesan Pizza Sandwich with Gallagher’s fried chicken, a throaty growl escaped from within me involuntarily. My delight was embarrassingly loud. Layers of garlic, roasted red pepper and basil danced in their house-made sauce, sandwiched between the chewy wood-fired sourdough crust, complementing the breaded chicken and Gallagher’s signature spices. It was another culinary match made in heaven, like the BBQ pie match of the Chili Cheese Pizza with Shorty’s Smokehouse Pulled Pork. Chef, you’ve outdone yourself once again.

However, many critics recommend putting down your fork immediately and rushing to Pie Hard to experience the genius of chef and owner Michael Pastor. The accolades in the St. Louis Post Dispatch (critic Ian Froeb’s 2023 and 2024 100 Best Restaurants list), Feast Magazine (2023 Feast 50 Readers’ Choice Awards for Best Pizza) and Sauce Magazine are well-deserved. Locals shower both the menu and service with 5-star reviews on Yelp and Facebook.

Your taste buds will no doubt be impressed by the quality of their cuisine. Every dough, every sauce, every topping, every protein is made in house, except for the cheese and pepperoni. Pie Hard’s unique flavor combinations are a highlight among Waterloo’s pizza-rich offerings, with a total of 13 restaurants serving pies. But the magic of Pie Hard is more than the food. Meet Megan Keefe: the yin to Michael’s yang, a creative collaborator and marketing maven whose vision to bring Michael’s recipes to her hometown has gained a loyal local following.

Megan worked with Space STL for months to design and create Pie Hard’s funky-fresh space. Her style is the essence of Pie Hard’s vibe (perhaps inspired by her background in fashion retail) and reflects the adorable flavor combinations on the menu. She’s the cool girl we all want to be friends with.

But Megan has also discovered that success in Waterloo is achieved not through competition but through collaboration with neighboring restaurants in downtown Waterloo. Pie Hard supplies Vintage Wine Bar and all of Monroe County, including my own Christmas party for 70 with the most tender pork tenderloin with herb salsa verde, mac & cheese with candied bacon, and mashed potatoes with goat cheese. Megan’s cocktails are a real showstopper at Stumpy’s Spirits. Stubborn customers from Germany enjoy Pie Hard delivery to the brewery, pie bowling at Stubborn Fest, and catering at Stubborn’s downstairs speakeasy. The Stubborn-Hard fusion also made for an entertaining conversation on the Stubborn podcast. Come to the bar and enjoy an apricot-flavored Hans Lager, brewed by Stubborn specifically to complement Pastor’s pizza sauce.

Out of adversity comes perseverance and innovation for this duo. Since their planned opening in April 2020, they have faced Covid and have been constantly evolving since their food truck days. To survive the pandemic, they offered pop-up menus with dishes from around the world that gave us reasons to never leave Waterloo. Seasonal specials, themed menus, and trivia events keep diehard Pie Hard fans coming back for more. Attend their pizza-making class to learn about the slow, cold fermentation of their pizza dough. Enjoy a “Soup Nazi”-inspired menu at Seinfeld trivia night. Schedule 3/14/25 for their Pi Day celebration, featuring pie-themed cocktails, dough-flipping lessons with Nate, a Backstoppers fundraiser, and a pie-making contest judged by Waterloo-area math teachers. Tell your aunt that her winning pie might become Pie Hard’s next pudding flavor.

And there’s more on the horizon. Pop culture-inspired menus, DoorDash delivery, and maybe another takeout location are all in the works at the Pie Hard coffee machine. Their inventive endeavors are in constant motion.

The partnership between Megan and Michael is evident in every element of Pie Hard. Megan creates her cocktails for Michael and Michael trusts Megan to test new recipes for him: an example of their symbiosis. Together they have developed a recipe for success, both for the Pie Hard fan club and for Waterloo.

Vivanda and I (Pipa) started writing an article about our cooking tricks and pro tips for various restaurants around the country. Pie Hard was first on the list – we wrote that we recommend using their fancy sauce to dip the pizza crust in. But that one tip felt pathetic and incomplete. So we ended up talking about the other things we like about Pie Hard. We got so distracted by our devotion and enthusiasm that we decided to write just about Pie Hard. Mainly because it would give us an excuse to eat there again – after all, there was a post about the chicken parmesan pizza sandwich with Gallagher’s Fried Chicken…

On a recent visit, as Viv and I chatted with Megan, I tried to figure out what exactly it was that kept drawing me back to Pie Hard since they opened. Is it really just their amazing food? The way their homemade kimchi brings out the best in the bulgogi ribeye and that they make an aioli with the gochujang? It goes beyond combining flavors. It’s much more than making creative fusion dishes. The respect and deep appreciation for global ingredients combined with a real understanding of their origins shines through in each of their pop-ups. And yet every dish on the menu—the pie, the non-pie, the salads—is so quintessentially them, and they have such deep roots and wide ramifications in the community, that I associated this with Waterloo cuisine.

But I digress. What I’ve discovered so far about why I keep coming back to Pie Hard—and why I always, always check out their upcoming pop-ups and special dates before making vacation plans with my family—is that Michael and Megan and their team are warm, welcoming, and inclusive. I feel good coming in. It’s the first place my family and I have brought out-of-town guests to. They actively promote other restaurants in town. That’s how we found out about Stubborn German and Shorty’s when we moved to Waterloo. They really care about people and the community. And that’s something that feeds my soul in addition to my belly.