Owner and operator of the recently opened d20 Pizza, Colin Freas is a former software engineer turned restauranteur in addition to being a lifelong gamer. As an engineer, he says he got sick of sitting behind a desk, feeling the sedentary lifestyle become increasingly detrimental to both his physical and mental health. Born and raised in Long Island, his mom was from Santa Cruz so he visited throughout his life, eventually moving here a couple years ago to help open a bakery.
He then found himself inspired to open a pizza bar/board game café, turning aspiration into reality when he opened d20 in July. Featuring an eclectic collection of on-site board games, including chess, Freas describes the intentionally curated ambiance as a hangout space that is neither work nor home and is welcoming, casual and informal with a blend of nostalgic and contemporary design. He defines the food as pizza-forward high-end gastropub fare, with help from his cousin Matisse, a culinary consultant and trained chef.
The Detroit-style pizza is its signature offering, open and airy thick focaccia-style dough with good chew paired against a Wisconsin brick cheese crispy crust. The Endless Summer veggie pizza and mushroom lovers Shroom It Up are other favorites as is a classic Caesar salad. Housemade mocktails, local beer and wine are offered and a torn-up pizza crust bread pudding is a dessert.
How does your previous career help with your current one?
COLIN FREAS: In software engineering, much of the time is spent not writing code, but instead figuring out what code needs to be written. Similarly, with making pizza and especially our dough, dialing in the process of getting it perfect and totally consistent took us a while. And also, just like in software engineering, the problem-solving mindset needed is actually quite similar to making a great pizza.
How do you plan to evolve d20?
In the coming months, we hope to flush out our board game library with a more extensive selection and set them up in a section of our restaurant with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a rolling library ladder. With the food, we want to start offering soft pretzels, more salads and appetizers, and we also have a brick pizza oven that we hope to utilize to offer more diverse pizza styles and options.
1520 Mission Street, Santa Cruz, 831-777-5331
