Pogonip Pizza debuts near UC Santa Cruz with bold toppings and a nod to Santa Cruz bike culture

Despite a 25-year career in the automotive and powersports industry, restaurants are in Ryan Thompson’s blood. His parents owned breakfast spot Friar Tuck’s in Carmel and his grandparents ran The Colonial Inn restaurant on Ocean Street in Santa Cruz during the middle of the last century. Before that, Thompson’s great-grandparents ran a restaurant at the beachfront Scholl Mar Castle bathhouse in Seabright before it was demolished in 1967 and a hamburger stand at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. 

After years of cooking for friends and family, and the occasional pop-up, Thompson couldn’t resist fate any longer. In February, he became a fourth-generation restaurateur when he opened Pogonip Pizza in Santa Cruz’s Upper Westside neighborhood near the base of the UC Santa Cruz campus. 

In a county brimming with pizza joints — more per capita than New York or Chicago — Thompson brings his own vision to California-style pies, offering creative and primarily vegetarian toppings made with seasonal and locally sourced ingredients. He draws inspiration from Santa Cruz’s culture and mountain biking community with pizza names that reference films set in the area and nearby trails, like Barking Dogs ($22.50) and Magic Carpet ($23.50), lending a welcoming atmosphere to neighbors in the know.

In a small commercial center, Pogonip Pizza is one of four businesses, including a laundromat, a dog grooming business and a 7-Eleven, within a sea of schools, churches and homes. Across the street, a historic gate marks the entrance to a walking path that leads to the university and the edge of Pogonip, a 640-acre city open space that runs along the edge of the campus. 

It’s a remote location — unless you live there. On one hand, Pogonip Pizza is in the middle of nowhere, but the spot is also surrounded by families and students. “This really is a food desert, so we wanted to put something out here for the neighborhood,” said Thompson. 

Thompson’s business partner, Aaron Freitas, owns Surf City Suds Laundromat in the same shopping center. When Jewish community group Santa Cruz Hillel left the space during the pandemic, Freitas saw an opportunity to open a restaurant. In the beginning, they partnered with Woodhouse Blending & Brewing, where Thompson had held several pop-ups under the Pogonip Pizza name. But the craft brewery later pulled out of the project. Thompson and Freitas are now co-owners. 

Pogonip Pizza serves six Woodhouse beers on tap, in addition to canned domestic beers, wine and soda. “We’re good friends with those guys, and we love supporting them,” said Thompson. 

The process of rezoning for a restaurant, permitting and construction took almost three years. But the result could easily become essential for nearby families, students and mountain bikers. A dozen inside tables were already full by 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday last week, with guests sipping cold glasses of craft beer and sharing 12-inch pies. The kitchen is open on one side of the restaurant, and guests can watch Thompson and his staff spread cheese and sauce, slide pies into and out of the industrial oven, and finish them with fresh mozzarella, basil or hot honey. In another nod to Santa Cruz’s bike culture, bicycles built by local frame builders hang from the walls alongside a historic penny farthing and a kooky tall bike.

Each pie comes in only one size and feeds one or two people, depending on how hungry they are. The chewy crust bubbles up with beautifully singed spots around the edges, and is remarkably sturdy in the center, despite the weight of the toppings. Cup pepperoni dots the classic pepperoni ($20), a crowd-pleaser that my two children happily gobbled up. 

Thompson’s creativity shines in his pies loaded with fresh herbs, greens, and homemade condiments. In the Santa Carla ($22) — named after Santa Cruz’s nickname in the “The Lost Boys” film, famously filmed partly in Pogonip in the 1980s — thin, tangy zucchini kimchi lends dynamic crunch and spice to a garlicky white pie. The High Street Local ($23.50) — a nod to a former dance club at the same site — is like a salad in pizza form, baked with spinach, slightly sweet tangerine-cured olives and crushed pistachios, then topped with a fistful of peppery arugula, gooey stracciatella and a vibrant scallion sauce. 

“I don’t really like to be confined to a box,” said Thompson about his pizza-making style. “I think that pizza is an international food, and we live in an area that has lots of cultures in it, and I like to bring all of those things into my pizza.”

Pogonip Pizza is currently open for limited hours, from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Thompson and Freitas plan to expand into the evening and earlier in the day, and add other items such as salads and sandwiches to the menu. The outdoor patio also needs to be approved by the city for service. 

Thompson pushes back on the idea that Pogonip Pizza is “yet another pizza spot,” as some neighbors said when they heard about the project. With the area’s Italian immigrant history, Santa Cruz has a longstanding pizza tradition that it should be proud of, he said. He pointed to the national impact of local pizza-makers like Justin Wadstein of Sleight Of Hand Pizza and Spencer Glenn, the executive chef at Pizza My Heart, among others, who earned world championship titles multiple times,and continue to make great pizza in the area. 

Thompson says he hopes his creations bring something new to the table. “I want to be able to change things and do things a bit differently, and I’m hoping that takes off,” he said. “With places like Bantam [in Santa Cruz] and Pizza Series [in Scotts Valley], people are used to seeing new ingredients on pizzas, so I hope that the seasonal pies that we come out with will also be enjoyed.”

222 Cardiff Place, Santa Cruz; pogonip.pizza. 

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