Ovens at The Pie Hole are always hot and crammed. The chef and her cooking assistants alternate shifts and bake pies 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the famous Los Angeles bakery. It is 9 a.m., and for Chef Beth Kellerhals it is one of her busiest moments in the kitchen. 

In this windowless kitchen, 75 sweet pies and 150 savory pies are made every day.

The Pie Hole was opened in October 2011 and has brought L.A. a quaint place to hang out.  

Wearing a grey Pie Hole work hoodie and a white and yellow striped headband, Kellerhais talks to her cooking assistants and assigns tasks. She holds a writing board in her left hand and points, with a black pen, to the paper clipped on the board. 

“We need to make more Mexican Chocolate pies,” Kellerhals tells one of her cooking assistants.  

Kellerhals started her job at The Pie Hole, a family-owned café in Los Angeles, just before Christmas in 2012. Baking was her long-time passion, but she also loved the sense of community that the café creates for people.

Read Also: Hole In One: The Pie Hole Los Angeles Revolutionizes Breakfast

Kellerhals enjoys talking to customers when she visits the café. She treats most of her regular customers as her friends, even if she doesn’t know all of their names. 

“I know Cinnamon,” said Kellerhals. 

Cinnamon is the name of a couple’s dog.

“Everyone in The Pie Hole knows their dog’s name,” Kellerhals said. “We all greeted her dog when they came.”

The Pie Hole community helped Kellerhals land the chef's job at the popular gathering spot in downtown’s booming Arts District. One of Kellerhals’ former co-workers at Sunny Spot, a restaurant co-owned by Roy Choi, the creator of the gourmet Korean taco truck Kogi, was a regular customer at The Pie Hole. He knew the café’s co-owners Matthew Heffner and Sean Brennan, and when he heard that The Pie Hole was looking for a chef, he introduced them to Kellerhals.

“She is passionate about what she is doing. She has the same goals as we do: having the best pie that anybody hasn’t had before,” said Brennan. “She is extremely talented. So our expectations are really high, and so are hers. So it matches really well.”

This family-owned business cares more about its customers than it does about winning awards. The chefs at The Pie Hole make everything from scratch because they want customers to feel like they are at home. It is also this goal that attracted Kellerhals to work at The Pie Hole. 

“We want to make pies that taste like grandma’s pies, but even better,” said Kellerhals.

The young shop has garnered a lot of media exposure: L.A. Weekly has written several articles praising the restaurant; According to Yelp, an online urban guide, the café’s first location drew more than 1,000 customer reviews. People who went there also rated the shop four stars out of five. 

On March 6, The Pie Hole opened in Old Town Pasadena, next to Intelligentsia Coffee. This new location became another challenge for the chef, but Kellerhals said that she was ready to make more pies.

The first challenge was last Thanksgiving, when they had just moved to the new kitchen  

“Thanksgiving was really tough,” said Kellerhals. “I didn’t sleep for two days.”

However, working longer hours while organizing the new kitchen brought the team closer to each other. They rallied together to make pies. The pies sold out by early afternoon on the day before Thanksgiving. People lined up in front of The Pie Hole shop before 7 a.m., wanting to take a whole pie home.

Kellerhals appreciated the effort her team put together. Such team cooperation became Kellerhals’s best memory in the kitchen.

“It just brought me and the whole kitchen a lot of joy to know that people were so dedicated that they were willing to wake up early and come and stand in line, ” said Kellerhals.

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A Baking Journey

Baking has played a big part of Kellerhals’ life from early on. She grew up in Barlett, a suburb west of downtown Chicago. Her family loved food. Her aunts cooked and baked, and an uncle owned a butcher shop. 

Kellerhals didn’t realize her long-time hobby could one day become her career. She found her first job as a baker after graduating from French Pastry School in Chicago in 2005. She tolerated a demanding boss who yelled, command and pushed her baking skills to a new level.

“I like the pressure of the industry,” said Kellerhals, describing life in the kitchen. “People often say that it’s like a pressure-cooker environment. If you enjoy that, you can go further in the industry.”

Unlike other jobs, bakers can’t finish their work at home. Kellerhals loves the nature of being a cook because she plans her job, gets it done and enjoys her time off. 

On one recent Wednesday, Kellerhals had a day off. She parked her dark grey Volvo in front of the Europane Bakery on East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. She left the window of the front passenger seat open so that her dog Lady Edith, a border terrier, could enjoy the breeze of a sunny spring day. Kellerhals adopted Lady Edith a couple of months ago. She said that she couldn’t take her eyes off of Lady Edith because the color of her fur reminded her of The Downton Abbey, a British TV show loved by her and The Pie Hole’s co-owners. 

Kellerhals' love for The Downton Abbey inspired her to create her recipe for Earl Grey Tea Pie. Kellerhals finds most of her new ideas while travelling. 

“I always feel inspired when I am able to leave and go somewhere new and see pastries and food with a different eye and a fresh perspective,” said Kellerhals. 

In her free time, she goes on food journies, trying different recipes she finds in food blogs and magazines. 

“I plan my day around food,” said Kellerhals. “I am a champion eater.”

As a little girl, she would be really mad if she got home from school and her mom wasn’t making something delicious.  

Being a foodie, Kellerhals’ taste buds welcome more than just American food. 

“I love the street food in China,” said Kellerhals.

When Kellerhals was still a college student, she went to a Chinese restaurant in Chicago and fell in love with dishes that were so different from her mom’s kitchen. Food drove Kellerhals to study more about Chinese culture and history. Inspired by the Chinese movie “Raise the Red Lantern,” she moved in 1999 to Sheng Yang, a city in northern China. She lived there for two years where she studied Chinese and its culture.  Kellerhals became fascinated by the traditional architecture in northern China because the movie was shot in one of the old buildings.

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What’s Next For The Pie Hole

Kellerhals misses the street food in China. She bravely tried anything and everything when she lived there. When she returned to the states, she began to cook Chinese food and even began adding Chinese seasonings to desserts she made for herself. 

Kellerhals moved to L.A. in September 2007, and chose to live in a guesthouse on the east side of L.A., close to Chinese neighborhoods in San Gabriel, Alhambra and Monterey Park.  

“I am always in the Chinese 99 Ranch Market, ” said Kellerhals.

In the future, Kellerhals plans to bring Chinese elements to the Pie Hole, such as Beijing meat pies and Sichuan pepper ice cream that can go with pies in the cafe.  

For now, the kitchen is Kellerhals’ world stage, where she performs and shines. 

“I really enjoy my life right now," said Kellerhals. “I get to make great pie and hang out with lovely people.”

Contact Staff Writer Scarlett Zhiqi Chen here.