In May, the show America’s Best Restaurants came to Estes Park to film a segment on the beloved 50s diner.
Host Luis Rivera watched the chef, Ivan Rodriguez, who is also the restaurant’s general manager, prepare a classic Reuben–the most ordered sandwich at the shop–and then he bit in to savor the hot-off-the-grill corned beef and cheesy masterpiece.
Owner Val Thompson then sat down with Rivera as he sampled several of the restaurants comfort food specialties including homemade chicken tenders that are soaked in buttermilk and then hand-coated with a breading made in-house before being slipped into the fryer. Rivera praised the dish for its light but crunchy breading and commented that the chicken was “super juicy.”
He also sampled the restaurant’s tater tots, creamy mac and cheese before digging into some of Thompson’s famous pies. He started with Chocolate Peanut Butter pie, a confection made from scratch with a chocolate French silk filling and then a peanut butter silk filling topped by whipped cream and a sprinkling of chocolate chips.
After melting into a bite, Rivera pronounced the pie “awesome,” then Thompson offered a slice of Coconut Cream Pie made from a recipe handed down through the generations from her Austrian great grandmother. “We still do it the same way she did it, slow cooked on the stove over a double boiler and then topped with whipped cream.
Rivera asked Thompson about how she came to be a restaurant owner. She explained that her mom taught her to cook when she was about 10 years old and the family entertained often for holiday. As an adult, her home became the family gathering spot and people encouraged her to open a restaurant. She thought that sounded like too much work, so she and her husband Rick started with just a walk up pie and bakery shop in 2006 before moving to their current location in 2013 and opening a diner serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The shop makes 150 pies a day. While many of them are sliced and served at the restaurant or purchased whole by people who take them home, some of them are available on Goldbelly
Production steps up during the holidays. “Everyone likes pie at Thanksgiving,” said Thompson who loves being a part of so many families holiday dinners. You Need Pie will prepare more than 2,000 pies for Thanksgiving with 1,000 being ordered thorugh the shipping company and another 1,000 will be bought through corporate orders, in addition to another 400 to 500 pies sold locally at the shop.
Thompson says the shop’s motto is “WGBP — would grandma be proud. These are her recipes, it’s the way she like to cook, and it’s the way we like to run our business.”
Rivera also enjoyed the restaurant’s hand-breaded chicken-fried steak, a New York Strip that is breaded, fried and slathered with a homemade sausage gravy and one of the shop’s award winning pies, a caramel apple pecan pie which features an oat streusel topped drizzled with caramel sauce.
As Rivera oohed and aahed over each bite, Thompson said that each fruit pies contains about two and a half pounds of fruit. “A normal pie you would use about two to three cups of fruit. We use six cups,” said Thompson. Rivera declared the pies “over achievers.”
With the restaurant’s success, the Thompsons are now offering franchising opportunities.
The 12-minute segment can be watched on You Need Pie’s Facebook page, and on the America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow YouTube channel.