There is a moment, somewhere between the oven and the table, when pizza is at its most powerful. The box warms your hands as you carry it to your car. The scent escapes in slow waves. Cheese, char, a trace of fennel, something sweet, something sharp.
You drive home with the windows cracked, not for air, but to keep from losing your mind. By the time you arrive, you are no longer hungry in any ordinary sense. You’ve been driving, intoxicated, under the influence of that aroma.
Now picture a night with friends at your favorite pizzeria. The long-awaited arrival. Steam rises. Hands hover. The first slice is lifted and the cheese stretches into a long, trembling thread before it yields. There is laughter, a pause, a kind of reverence. This is food as the experience of shared anticipation.
It’s no accident this craving peaks now, as Santa Cruz Pizza Week arrives from April 22 through May 3, and it celebrates that moment and pushes it further. Local kitchens are treating the surface of the pizza as a field for invention, layering sweetness and heat, umami and sea, fresh and fat. The result is a tour of Santa Cruz through its toppings, a series of edible ideas that answer the simple question: what else can pizza be?
START WITH THE RULE BREAKERS
At Bookie’s Pizza, the Beeteroni looks familiar at first glance. Red rounds against melted cheese, a classic composition. But here is the Bookie’s magic. The pepperoni is made from beets. It brings earth and a soft sweetness that shifts the balance of the whole pie. The salt of the cheese and the acid of the sauce stay in place, but the usual spice is replaced by something more curious, more grounded. For those who choose the vegan version, the effect is even more pronounced. The structure of a classic remains, yet the center is re-imagined Santa Cruz style.
Eggplant appears across town at Engfer Pizza Works as roasted eggplant meets pickled sweet peppers, red onion, arugula, and a flicker of orange zest. The eggplant is soft and deep, almost smoky. The peppers bring a bright tang and the citrus arrives, not as fruit, but as aroma, lifting everything. What might have settled into heaviness is turned into something vivid. You taste the garden and the grove in the same bite.
Where ocean meets forest and fog shares days with sun… Santa Cruzans love a beautiful contrast, and nowhere is that clearer than in the marriage of sweet and heat on a Santa Cruz pizza.
At Crow’s Nest Beach Market, the Smokin’ Hot Chick offers that tension with confidence with spicy barbecue sauce, chicken, applewood smoked bacon, jalapeños, and a final gloss of hot honey. Smoke sits low on the palate. Heat rises. Then the honey ties the two together, sweet at first, then carrying the burn a moment longer. Each bite ignites, resolves, then resets. It’s a rhythm you won’t tire of.
A similar balance appears at Pizzeria La Bufala in the Dolce Piccante Party. Broccoli rabe brings a familiar freshness, while Italian sausage adds fat and salt. Hot honey returns, but here it plays against the greens as much as the meat. Bitter, sweet, rich. Each element pulls in a different direction, and the pleasure comes from the way each holds it own in a delicious dance.
At Kianti’s Pizza & Pasta Bar, The G.O.A.T. lives up to its name beginning with an aromatic roasted garlic white sauce. Mozzarella follows, melting into that base, while basil elevates the whole with a green, almost sweet brightness. Pepperoni brings salt and spice before goat cheese enters with its richness and tang, giving the pie a sharper edge. A drizzle of honey ties it all together, sweet against salt, smoothing the transitions between each bite. Add red peppers on request, and the heat arrives just late enough to linger.
SOME PIES LOOK INWARD, OTHERS TRAVEL
At East End Gastropub, the Seafood Scampi Pizza begins with a familiar coastal idea and sets it on dough. Shrimp, calamari, clams, garlic, lemon, and a smooth béchamel. The lemon cuts through the cream, and the seafood brings a subtle salinity that lingers at the back of the tongue.
And then. Someone had to do it, and East End Gastropub did. The Taco Pie. It shouldn’t work, right? But it absolutely does. Seasoned beef meets a verde béchamel, then comes the crunch of tortilla chips, the freshness of pico de gallo, and a sweep of Baja sauce. Texture becomes part of the flavor. Soft, crisp, cool, and warm in quick succession, playful, but not careless. Each layer fulfills its mission.
Elsewhere, the Mediterranean makes its case. At La Marea Cafe, the Mykonos gathers feta, olives, spinach, and tomato into a pie that evokes a Greek vacation. The salt of the olives and cheese leads the way, and the greens follow with a mild bitterness, clean, direct, and unapologetic in its flavor. The Green Heat from the same kitchen moves in another direction, with green garlic cream, spring pesto, sausage, ricotta, and jalapeño. This is Santa Cruz in season. The garlic is fresh, not harsh. The pesto carries the field. The jalapeño adds a spark that keeps the richness from settling.
Mushrooms, long valued as much for texture as for flavor, step forward in force at The Pizza Series. The Much, Much, Mushroom layers sautéed and fresh fungi over red sauce, then finishes with a porcini cream and herbs. This is depth built on depth. The flavor unfolds rather than strikes. Earth, then more earth, then a hint of wood and herb. It asks you to slow down, close your eyes, and experience.
The same shop offers a Rosemary Ham pie that moves in a sweeter direction. Caramelized onions melt into the salt of the ham, and Gruyere adds a nutty richness. Fresh chives cut through at the end. It’s yet another study in balance, with rosemary acting as a bridge between the sweet and the savory
At Fawn Pizza & Vinyl Bar, the Concrete Ship brings together sausage, pepperoni, olives, and bright red sauce in a composition that feels classic until you notice the details. The olives add a sharp note to what might otherwise be a wall of salt and fat. Their presence changes the whole pie. The Fun Guy, with its mix of mushrooms and ricotta white sauce, moves toward softness and cream, with scallions offering a final note that keeps it from fading.
SOME RELY ON MEMORY, THEN REFINE IT
At Churchill and Beers, Mary’s Pizza Combination brings together salami, pepperoni, cotto salami, sausage, and mushrooms over a house sauce. It is a full table in a single pie. The pleasure here is not novelty. It is execution. Each meat holds its place. The mushrooms absorb and release flavor in equal measure. It is the kind of pizza that reminds you why the form became popular in the first place.
At Upper Crust Pizza & Pasta, the Sicilian Square offers something else entirely. A thick crust with a crisp edge and a soft interior. Sauce and cheese settle into the structure rather than sit on top of it. It is a different geometry, one that favors depth over stretch. Paired with a salad and dessert, it becomes a full meal, the kind that anchors a table for an evening.
Flatbreads at Laili Restaurant take yet another path. Apricot chicken; pear with gorgonzola; eggplant parmesan. Fruit appears as it has for centuries in this cuisine. Sweetness meets salt and cream, in combinations that feel almost inevitable once you taste them. This is where pizza edges toward something older, drawing on the Silk Road traditions of Afghanistan, Persia, and India, where fruit, spice, and savory have long been woven together, yet still at home on the same table.
Back at the Crow’s Nest Beach Market, pesto finds its way into rolled batons as even the appetizer gets involved, a reminder that the language of pizza can extend beyond the slice. Dough, herb, oil, and heat. Simple, then not so simple.
A WEEK OF PIZZA: HAVING IT ALL
If there is a way to approach Pizza Week, it may be this. Begin with what you know, a classic combination, then move outward. Try a touch of sweetness, a bit of heat. Let contrast entice you. By the end, take on the pies that seem strange at first reading. The seafood, the beets, the combinations that raise an eyebrow. These are the ones that will linger in memory and spark conversations.
What ties all of this together is not novelty for its own sake. It is a kind of local instinct. Santa Cruz cooks with what surrounds it. Fields, markets, coast, and a willingness to experiment.
And in the end, you return to the beginning. The box. The scent. The first slice. Only now, there is more to it. A trace of citrus where you did not expect it. A sweetness that delights. A heat that arrives late and lingers. You take another bite to understand it, then another because you want it.
CREATIVE PIZZA IS NOT JUST WEIRD PIZZA
Again, creative pizza is NOT just weird pizza. Even Santa Cruz doesn’t want “weird” for its own sake. What we want is permission to be indulgent, maybe upscale, or just nostalgic, but with a twist—familiar comfort, nudged sideways. That’s very California, coastal and us.
Pizza Week is what happens when California pizza finds its way to Santa Cruz. California gave pizza permission to experiment. Santa Cruz gives it our personality
The result is not a scene chasing authenticity, but one comfortable remixing it. Surf culture plays its part, that casual, anything-goes sensibility that resists rigid rules. Proximity to farms matters too, where fresh toppings are not a luxury but a given.
Instead of one identity, we’re blessed with a patchwork of styles that somehow feels coherent and leaves you with the question what do I feel like today?
Pizza Week runs from April 22 through May 3.
The craving it creates lasts much longer.
For all Pizza Week offerings, visit
Good Times’ Pizza Lineup page
Download the Pizza Week App
