A third-generation, Roman-style pizza restaurant is bringing ancient flavors to Goleta.
Pegaslice, located at 7398 Calle Real, Suite C, held its grand opening on Friday. It’s the only restaurant in Santa Barbara that sells roman-style pizza—known for its rectangle-shaped crusts full of large air bubbles, said owner McLeod Noormand.
“Not a lot of pizza places in Santa Barbara are super chef-driven,” Noormand said. “That’s what really makes Pegaslice unique.”
The location previously housed family-run eatery Home Plate Grill, which closed in March. Pegaslice is open Monday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
The restaurant’s pizza flavors include margherita, bianco, pesto, pepperoni, vegetable, BBQ and Hawaiian. Its single slices range from $4.50 to $5.50, its 8-slice pizzas are around $20 and its 16-slice pizzas range from $35 to $45.
Pegaslice also serves sandwiches with toppings such as prosciutto, parmigiano reggiano and crispy mortadella, salads and ice cream.
“Home Plate left a lot of big shoes to fill,” said Noormand, who attended Santa Barbara City College’s culinary school.
Noormand brings a history of pizzeria expertise to Pegaslice. He got his start at his father and grandfather’s pizzeria, Giovanni’s Pizza in Carpinteria.
“They know just as well as I do that the restaurant game is a very hard thing,” Noormand said.
The difference, he said, is that Pegaslice’s pizza dough formula is much more difficult to perfect.
Chefs ferment the dough in bulk for 24 hours, then portion it into individual dough balls before fermenting it for another full day. He said the long fermentation process makes the dough more digestible and creates larger air bubbles.
“And then the stretching process is the biggest part of it because that takes a lot of skill,” Noormand said, “a lot of light and delicate hands.”
Then, the chefs do it all over again. Other pizza restaurants—like Giovanni’s—typically don’t ferment their dough at all, Noormand said.
“I love being able to have a thick pizza,” said Eva Corley, a front of house worker for Pegaslice. “It makes it feel a lot healthier and lighter.”
Noormand said he’s looking to open more Pegaslice locations across Santa Barbara County in the future.
In the meantime, he said he’s planning seasonal menu items, and developing gluten-free options and new desserts.
“A super unique experience to have is to see it (the restaurant) when it was nothing, and then to see it when it’s finished,” Noormand said. “Being able to see the finished product after the mess that it was when we started was a huge game changer.”
