Victoria Moreno said the concept for Lovers Pizzeria came about because she and her fiance, Dusty Dworak, wanted to spend as much time together as possible.

“The name [Lovers Pizzeria] essentially exists because me and Dusty wanted to be together all the time, and we were like, what can we do where we just work together all the time?” Moreno said.

Dworak said the name is also, at heart, about their deep and abiding love for pizza.

“We are pizza lovers, and we wanted a place for pizza lovers to come to enjoy the pizza that we love,” Dworak said. “We [are] just sharing our love for pizza with San Antonio.”

The background


Before the couple decided to open their own restaurant, Dworak was the pitmaster at 2M Smokehouse from 2016 to 2021. During his time at the smokehouse, the couple took a trip to New York, where they discovered their passion for coal-fired style pizza.

“I was the first employee [2M Smokehouse] ever hired, and I worked over there for five years,” Dworak said. “And [one time] we went to New York and had pizza [where] we were like, ‘oh my god, this is amazing.' We don't have anything like that down here, and there's so many mom-and-pop barbecue places, but there's not a lot of mom-and-pop pizzerias down here.”

Moreno said their mutual passion for food made opening a restaurant together a natural decision.

“Dusty has a passion for bread, and I have been a cook my whole life, so [with] our skills combined [making] pizza made so much sense,” Moreno said.


In 2023, the couple opened their first location at Steves Avenue and Roosevelt Avenue. During their first seven months, business was fairly slow, with the couple selling around 20 pizzas a day. Then, in March 2024, they got busy and began selling out. Unfortunately, the couple said they had to suddenly close with a week’s notice due to difficulties with their former landlord.

It was during this time that they began to develop a following on social media. As they began detailing information about when they were going to reopen and where their new location would be, their following grew exponentially.

When the current Lovers Pizzeria location reopened in Monte Vista, they had a line around the building and down the sidewalk. On their first day, Lovers Pizzeria sold out 20 minutes before they opened.

What they offer


The couple said the philosophy behind their menu is serving food that they also love to eat.

“I think San Antonio loves food that reminds them of home,” Moreno said. “And I think that our poblano, our tres leches, even the cookies, [are] things that remind them of stuff that their mom or their grandmas would make.”

Lovers offers three pizza sauces—tomato, poblano and vodka—fresh ingredients from Hill Country farms, pepperoni sourced from New Jersey, garlic bread and homemade desserts. Additionally, Dworak makes the naturally fermented sourdough crust fresh daily, using San Antonio spring water, flour and salt.

“I'm trying to crazy localize it,” Dworak said. “[To] do something that I love in the East Coast, the coal fire pizza game, but bring it [here] and have it tied to San Antonio in a way. ... It's naturally fermented local flowers, sourdough pizza, [and] all of our produce—our mushrooms, our olive oil—all come from Texas.”


Currently, the pizzeria can make 100 pizzas a day. Their most popular dessert is the tres leches. Moreno makes monthly tres leches flavors, such as peaches and cream, fruity pebbles and horchata.

What else?

Since their relocation, lines form outside the door of the pizzeria almost every day they are open. Moreno said that the restaurant sells out of pizzas fairly quickly and the lines can result in a long wait to receive your order.

“We try to have as much communication about the wait and expectation of everything, because if we weren't telling people it would just be like a mess,” Moreno said.


Dworak said the lines remind him of barbecue lines that form in Austin.

“It almost has that feel where people are kind of just hanging out. It’s a super cool vibe, Dworak said. "People get to talk to each other, you're just hanging out, it organically just kind of happens like that. [The experience has] been really cool to see people even lining up in the first place.”