Bike shop Pedal’N Pi serves great pizza and more in Crystal City south of St. Louis

A little ways south of St. Louis, close to where the countryside rolls, Pedal’N Pi is fueling customers for the road. If you’re a trail biker – and, actually, if you’re not – this is the place to come. It feels like a good business model, especially when the weather is fine (and it’s a perfect day for a ride) or you happen to have a hankering for some pretty excellent sourdough pizza.

It feels odd at first: You open the door, step in out of sunshine and, although you can see the behemoth wood oven looming in back (you can’t miss it – it weighs 4,000 pounds), you’re in a forest of bicycles. What is going on?

“We needed a bike shop in town and we wanted it to be different,” said owner Chris Creed, who opened the business in 2021 at 514 Bailey Road in Crystal City.

Any way you cut it, Pedal’N Pi is a family-owned and -operated business. René Creed is the genius behind the dough, her husband Chris Creed is a “former racer and aspiring pro,” and their only daughter, Aubrey Creed (they also have seven sons), is a trained chef who is utilizing her culinary strengths with some private, monthly dinner clubs at the shop. There’s a lot of hard work going on here, and people seem to be eating it up. There’s a line through the door even on a Wednesday, and everyone seems to know each other.

The oven burns on white oak just shy of 800 degrees, blistering the dough to a crust in a matter of minutes. The menu is simple with six pies in all, and the formulas are simple too. The tomato sauce – markedly delicious – has just two ingredients: Italian tomatoes and quite a lot of salt. One particularly beautiful pizza is jeweled with kalamata and green olives, garlic, red onion and, “a little bit of sausage and pepperoni.” The four-cheese is a magical arrangement of garlic confit, Baetje Farms chèvre, provolone and Parmigiano Reggiano aged 24 months.

There are salads too (burrata with tomato and basil, a Greek salad with pepperoncini and housemade dressing). There’s also chicken and dumplings, chicken wings and baked goods: housemade chocolate chip cookies and giant cinnamon rolls, along with beautiful loaves of sourdough. For beverages, you'll find an assortment of beer, wine and soft drinks.

There are seats for 33 in the 1,100-square-foot space, and a shop in back where a man named Jonny Merli tightens bolts, fixes flats or whatever else is needed for a day on the trails.

Pedal’N Pi is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday through Friday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. It is closed on Sunday and Monday.