The Arizona Pie Shop That Started At Farmers Markets And Is Now A Treasure Of The State

Learning to bake really good homemade pies has a bit of a learning curve. For example, to get the best crust, you need to use cold butter, you must test that your pie is correctly par-baked, and if you want your pumpkin pie to achieve a perfectly silky texture, you have to drop the temperature. We don't blame you one bit for eschewing baking your own pies in favor of buying them already prepared — especially if you were to source your pies from Mamma Toledo's The Pie Hole, based in Phoenix, AZ. There, Tonya Saidi has been hand-making dozens of pie flavors and multiple varieties since 2014.

What began as a hobby in the mid-1990s eventually turned into a micro-business, when Saidi would hawk her wares at farmer's markets throughout 2010. By 2011 she had upgraded to a food truck, even entering her city's first ever food truck festival in October of that year. In her mobile era, Saidi sold her signature mini-pies, which clock in at a perfect single-serve five inches in diameter.

Saidi opened her first brick-and-mortar location in 2013 as a shared outfit, then moved into her own present-day location on North 7th Street, in Moon Valley, a year later. Her hard work has not gone unnoticed, either. In 2020, 24/7 Tempo named Mamma Toledo's the Best Pie Shop in Arizona, based on Yelp reviews, an honorific that is also borne out by hundreds of positive reviews on both Google and Facebook.

Mamma Toledo's The Pie Hole stocks over 50 sweet flavors on a rotating basis with classic flavors like apple, cherry, strawberry rhubarb, key lime, and pecan, as well as more unique flavors like sour cream lemon, chocolate espresso cream, and Irish whiskey apple (plus vegan options). Because Mamma Toledo's only offers certain flavors in its pie case on any given day, if you come in and don't find the pie flavor you wanted, you can place an order online and pick it up the next day.

Guests of Mamma Toledo's pie shop rave about most everything on the menu, with one Redditor on the r/Phoenix subreddit saying the baked goods remind them of their grandma's. On Yelp, a reviewer was pleasantly surprise that the crust wasn't made out of the typical graham crackers, speculating instead caramel and nuts; actually, owner and baker Saidi is vehemently anti-graham cracker, preferring ginger snaps as the base of some crusts instead.