A shuttered San Antonio pizzeria is getting a second life inside one of Southtown's busiest bars. Starting Thursday, pizzaiolo John Winkler will begin serving his wood-fired pies out of the kitchen at Gimme Gimme, the rock-and-roll bar co-owned by Aaron Peña at 803 S. St. Mary's St., with the new residency kicking off September 4.
Peña said Winkler will serve pizza from Gimme Gimme's kitchen, reviving a menu that many San Antonio diners assumed was gone for good, according to CultureMap San Antonio. Winkler formerly owned Truth Pizzeria, which closed in 2022, and he is known for Neapolitan-style pizzas that first found a following through his Sulla Strada food truck, which he ran as the resident truck at Peña's former Squeezebox venue. Truth Pizzeria's pizzas were customizable, and the original brick-and-mortar shop offered white, margherita, vegetable, and pepperoni pies when Winkler opened it at 1602 E. Houston St. in 2020.
A Bar Owner's Longtime Support
Peña's admiration for Winkler's cooking goes back years. Peña once wrote that “this man's pie will forever have a top spot in my book,” a comment dating to 2020, and he supported Truth Pizzeria during its run on the East Side. Peña and Winkler first met 13 years before this residency, working together at Alamo Street Eat Bar, the pioneering Southtown food truck park that was owned by Steve and Jody Bailey Newman.
That early professional relationship has now come full circle at Gimme Gimme, the bar Peña opened in Southtown in August 2023 alongside Bar Loretta owner Roger Herr, bartender Michael Neff, and chef Paul Petersen, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The bar occupies a building that previously housed Irish pub Francis Bogside from 2015 until 2022, when that venue relocated to St. Paul Square, the paper reported. To bring Winkler's pizzas back, Peña bought a special pizza oven for the job, per CultureMap's report.
New Hours On Top Of An Existing Menu
Pizza at Gimme Gimme will be available Thursdays through Sundays, and Peña is still determining the exact service hours, the CultureMap report notes. The pizza residency stacks on top of Gimme Gimme's existing food program, which the San Antonio Current previously detailed as including a Wednesday steak night featuring ribeye au poivre with duck fat fries for $28, part of a late-night kitchen that already runs Wednesday through Sunday, according to the San Antonio Current. The bar can also reserve Mondays for dollar wing promotions, and per the CultureMap article, Truth Pizzeria may eventually bring back its full original menu at Gimme Gimme.
Gimme Gimme sits within a Southtown commercial corridor that has kept shifting shape around Peña's ventures. In March 2025, the connected space next door that once housed Peña's A Perfect Day wine bar was converted into a second San Antonio location for Friends of Sound Records, the same report from the Current noted, letting patrons wander between the bar and the vinyl shop through an interior hallway.
A Rocky Few Years For Peña
The pizza residency arrives after a difficult stretch for Peña, who permanently closed his former St. Mary's Strip venue, The Squeezebox, in July 2023 after seven years in business. He cited more than $200,000 in financial losses tied to two years of disruptive city road construction on North St. Mary's Street, according to Texas Public Radio. The prolonged project severely restricted foot traffic and parking near the bar.
That experience pushed Peña into local advocacy. In July 2024, he registered the Business Community PAC alongside fellow San Antonio hospitality owners, including Jody Bailey Newman of Alamo Street Eat Bar, to push back on behalf of small businesses hurt by municipal infrastructure projects and street closures, per the San Antonio Report.
Peña also spent part of 2025 fighting an aggressive form of testicular cancer, diagnosed in April of that year. He announced in November that he was officially cancer-free following surgery and 12 weeks of chemotherapy, the San Antonio Current reported. That May, before his recovery was confirmed, local chefs and hospitality workers organized a “Fajita Lounge” pop-up benefit at Gimme Gimme, selling $20 plates and running a raffle to help cover his treatment costs, with sponsored cocktails, donated food from area chefs, and sets from local DJs, as reported by the San Antonio Report.
