The first thing everyone asks Rick Giordano is what style of pizza his heavy metal eatery Headless Bat (3128 Morgan Ford Road) will serve. He’ll answer, “I just consider it good pizza,” but he admits that he questions the entire premise.
“It's always strange to me that that's the first question,” Giordano says. “It's like, ‘What style of pizza? Why? Is there a style that you don't like?’ All pizza is awesome. Even St. Louis style that is kind of garbage and not even really pizza, in my opinion, is still pretty good.”
For the record, the Headless Bat’s pizza has a thin, light and airy crust that crisps up nicely in the Italian brick oven. The sauce has a bit of sweetness with hits of spices and garlic, and it’s all topped with legit, stretchy, melty mozzarella.
“That's called New York style,” he says. “That's cool. But we're not in New York, so I don't really give a shit.”
In short, it’s the kind of pizza that he likes. Pretty much everything at Headless Bat, which is aiming for a soft opening by the middle of this month, followed by an official public launch, is something Giordano handpicked based on his personal taste. That’s true of the decor, the food, the bar offerings — even the sound level, which he promises, contrary to the metal theme, will never be too loud for good conversation.
Giordano is gambling that St. Louis will like what he likes, and after getting a look at his soon-to-be-open pizzeria, that seems like a safe bet.
From the outside, the building still brings to mind its former resident — the London Tea Room, which relocated in 2022 — but enter and all thoughts of scones, teapots and dainty china will vanish.
Probably best-known as part of local metal band Lion’s Daughter, Giordano did most of the work himself, painting the space a vibrant red and adding a long, beautiful wood-topped bar on the right side of the first room. Red underlighting adds a heavy metal ambiance as does the artwork covering the walls. Look closely, and you’ll spot everything from an Iron Maiden poster he’s had since he was a little kid (“probably got it at Spencer's Gifts in, like, 1989”) to work by local artists such as Jason Spencer or Matt Thornton to a circa 1986 Judas Priest Turbo one-sheet to the artwork Giordano has secretly made in his basement for years and figured he’d slip in.
He’s opened up the back events space to serve as the main dining area, and it carries a similar vibe, with Satan on the cross holding slices and a light-up tiger that issues its glow over the room.
During the time it’s taken to make all these changes, figure out the menus and get all the necessary permitting, Giordano has tested out the changed-up space.
“I've gotten drunk in here a good six to 10 times with a couple of friends and figured out like, ‘Hey, this is a pretty fucking awesome place to sit and have drinks with your friends and eat some pizza and listen to music and watch goofy horror movies,’” he says. “This is the place that I always wanted to be able to hang out. So now that I know it is that, I'm really excited about it. I'm really excited to actually open the door and let other people come check it out.”
A big part of getting to this point was figuring out the pizza itself, and after some thoughts of premade dough, he ended up instead developing the dough and sauce recipes himself. He also hired a chef, and the two have been collaborating on the menu.
The offering that stands out most to Giordano is a green curry pizza, an homage to the red curry pizza at the long-gone Thai Pizza Co. in the Delmar Loop. It’s already been a hit with taste testers.
“It was a bit unlike anything I've ever tasted before,” Giordano says. “He took what was my idea to take what I thought was a really good pizza from a decade ago in the Loop, and he turned it into a great pizza that's unique to us.”
There will also be some of the pizza standards and some less wild custom creations, such as jalapeño-popper or artichoke. He’s also planning on monthly specials, such as a dried-cricket pizza, that are more fun and could be a reason for customers to come in just to try.
Though the menu will mainly hold pizza, Headless Bat will also serve garbage bread, which involves toppings being wrapped up in pizza dough and sliced like a stromboli. There will also be jumbo wings and other appetizers, potentially spinach dip or bruschetta, and single-serving Peanut M&M cookie cakes.
“Very short menu, but we kind of want to specialize, and I would rather do a few things really, really well than try to be the Cheesecake Factory,” he says.
Giordano is a firm believer in the perfect union of pizza and beer, and he’s determined to add a rotating cast of bottles and cans not seen at other bars in town, such as beers from Hoof Hearted Brewing in Columbus, Ohio, and Nightmare Brewing Company in New York.
The bar menu will also include a short list of cocktails developed by Platypus’ Tony Saputo, like the Queen Wasp, which contains either tequila or mezcal, mango and smoked jalapeño. It has a spicy, smoky, sweet flavor that Giordano loves.
“I can't wait to drink a couple hundred of those next year,” he jokes.
Finally, there’s the music, which Giordano says will never be live because he wants Headless Bat to be the kind of place where customers can walk in and know they can have a conversation without shouting. But you can’t have a heavy metal pizza parlor without music, and so he’s created a curated playlist that’s 400 hours long.
All in all, it’s a package he’s hoping will appeal, and hearing from excited neighbors or random people telling Giordano it’s going to be great has been validating.
“It's really, really cool to get the support and enthusiasm that we've seen from everybody so far,” he says. “I’m excited.”
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