I went to Stillwater for Father’s Day weekend and ended up eating pizza inside a piece of Oklahoma restaurant history.
My parents met while attending Oklahoma State University, so part of the trip was them showing me and my son around campus and pointing out old places that still carried some meaning. We hit Eskimo Joe’s, stopped by a local comic book shop, walked through some OSU memory lanes, and then landed at The Original Hideaway Pizza.
I had eaten Hideaway before in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Plenty of Oklahomans have. What I had not fully connected was that the whole thing started right here in Stillwater, just off the OSU campus.
The Original Hideaway Pizza dates back to 1957, when it began as Campus Hideaway near Oklahoma State. The current restaurant is at 230 S. Knoblock St., across from OSU’s Old Central, and it still feels tied to the college crowd in a way the newer locations can’t really copy.
A big building built for Stillwater crowds
The first thing that caught me was the size of the place.
This is not a tiny old pizza counter surviving on nostalgia. The Stillwater Hideaway is big. I noticed a posted occupancy close to 500 people, which made immediate sense once I thought about football weekends, graduation weekends, move-in weekends, and all the other times Stillwater fills up faster than a parking lot near Boone Pickens Stadium.
Inside, the restaurant has the kind of visual clutter that works because it has history behind it. There are kites, old-school decorations, and VW Bug imagery tucked into the personality of the place.
The Volkswagen Beetle piece was new to me. After noticing Bugs in the décor and advertising, we asked about it and were told Hideaway once claimed to have the world’s largest fleet of VW Beetles for pizza delivery. Whether you treat that as hard history or restaurant lore, it is exactly the kind of oddball detail that sticks. The story goes that the Beetles eventually had to be retired because they kept breaking down, which may be the most believable part of all.
Fried mushrooms, hot enough to demand patience
We started with the fried mushrooms.
They were excellent, but they came out dangerously hot. Not “kind of warm” hot. More like “you should respect the mushroom and wait a minute” hot. The outside had that crisp fried shell, and the inside held onto heat like it had something to prove.
For the pizza, we ordered a large split half pepperoni and half pepperoni with jalapeño. That was partly because my son does not want jalapeños involved in his pizza life, which is fair. Childhood has enough challenges.
The pizza was great in the way Hideaway usually is when it’s on. Big slices, plenty of toppings, and enough food that we took most of it home. That is not a complaint. Leftover pizza is one of the few breakfast plans that requires no optimism.
What made this stop different from the other Hideaway locations I’ve visited was the context. In OKC or Tulsa, Hideaway feels like a solid regional pizza place. In Stillwater, it feels like you are eating at the source.
There is a difference.
You can see why a campus pizza shop from 1957 could grow into a regional chain with more than 20 locations across Oklahoma and nearby states. The original still has enough scale, history, and local weirdness to explain the expansion without turning the visit into a corporate origin story.
I like stops like this because they connect a town’s present to its older habits. Students still need pizza. Families still come back to campus. Parents still point out where they used to go. Kids still negotiate toppings. Somewhere in the middle of that, a place becomes part of the local map.
If you are in Stillwater for OSU, a game day, a campus visit, or just passing through Payne County, The Original Hideaway Pizza is worth knowing as more than another pizza stop. Order the fried mushrooms, give them a second before biting in, and take a look around while you wait.
Details
- Address: 230 S. Knoblock St., Stillwater, OK 74074
- Phone: (405) 372-4777
- Hours: Sunday-Thursday, 11:00 AM-10:00 PM; Friday-Saturday, 11:00 AM-11:00 PM
- Website: https://www.thehideaway.net/
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