Pyramid Burgers and Trixy Take Over Santa Barbara’s Revolver Pizza

It’s just past 5 p.m. on Monday night, and the tables outside of Revolver Pizza on San Andres Street are already full. The bar is packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and the scene is frenetic, with cooks jumping around the kitchen, servers squeezing in and out, and customers trying to figure out where to order. 

But it’s not the humble parlor’s beloved pepperoni and white pizza pies flying out of the hustling kitchen — it’s plates of steak Diane, manila clams in yuzu broth, shallot and leek tarte Tatin with horseradish whip, and chilled stone fruit with basil and chile that everyone eagerly awaits. It all feels way more Lower East Side Manhattan than sleepy Westside Santa Barbara.  

Most are also ordering a curious — some would like to believe revolutionary — sandwich: the Pyramid Burger, a triangular take on America’s favorite handheld, treated with the same snappy, vinegar-laced fixings that you find on an Italian grinder. Washing that down are the boundary-busting wines of Scott Sampler, from the tangy lineup of Scotty-Boy! wines like El Sandweech to the more extracted vins de garde from his L’Arge d’Oor label.

This is Trixy, a semi-regular pop-up run by Revolver’s chef-owner Nick Bodden, a veteran of fine dining who wound up in the pizza business almost by mistake. “I’m really trying to capture that New York City feel,” said Bodden, who turns the pizzeria into Trixy on Mondays about twice a month. “It’s small, ambitious food that’s not really so avant-garde. This is the closest thing to my style of cooking that I’ve ever done.”

He came to California in 2009, the year after he graduated from high school in New York. “Long Island was pretty bleak,” he said. “There was a darkness there. Nothing good was happening.”

His intention was to land in Hermosa Beach, but then he drove north. “By the time I hit Ventura, I was pretty much sold,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t going back down there. I nestled into Santa Barbara.”

He started making pastries for Renaud’s in Loreto Plaza soon after it opened. “I didn’t know much about cooking, but I knew I needed to find someone who would whoop me into shape,” said Bodden, who wanted classical French training. He didn’t want to be a pastry chef, but the patisserie was the closest environment he could find. 

Next was working at bouchon alongside Chef Greg Murphy. After that, he went back east to open a restaurant called Anejo in Tribeca with his friend Jonas Offenbach. At just 23, he was working with a half-million dollars to build a kitchen. “It was a huge deal for a bunch of kids,” he said.

That led to opening a restaurant in Singapore called Meta, where he stayed for about a year until the relationship with the investors went sour. “We just got our hearts broken,” he said. “It was not a great situation all around.”

After some time in Istanbul and New York, he hooked up with Murphy again a decade ago and took a long road trip back to Santa Barbara, where he’s been ever since. “But I was so used to working for myself that getting hired back into a regular restaurant wasn’t an option,” said Bodden. So, he started a pop-up called Beefhearts with his chef-photographer buddy Ron Allen, serving food at breweries such as Third Window and Draughtsmen.

Once he had a kid, that concept elevated into Coterie Club, a ticketed supper club with music. He hosted a dinner at SOhO during a Fruit Bats concert and served 30 people five courses on New Year’s Eve in 2018 out of Satellite S.B.’s tiny kitchen. “It wasn’t a good business model — it was a huge failure,” said Bodden, but he gained a reputation, and opened Dim Sama with the Sama Sama crew in Los Alamos.

When COVID killed all the chef jobs, he’d already been looking for his own place, and almost launched a concept in the former Paesano’s Pizza on San Andres Street. “I was planning on doing something different than pizza,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking, but it was something that wouldn’t have worked. I know that.” 

The investors fell through for that, but then his real estate agent later suggested putting in a low bid for the spot. It was accepted, so he raised $60,000 and started Revolver with Allen, Nick Gebhardt, and Carl Perry (whom you might recognize as one of the Independent’s most frequent music photographers). They put their own art on the walls and brought in their record collections. 

“We gained a lot of attention,” said Bodden, whose pizzas usually had to be ordered in advance because they’d sell out quickly. “It was the perfect thing to happen at that time.”

But it was the middle of 2020, and business remained bizarre for a while. “There wasn’t any year that was the same,” he said. “It was all very strange and weird and full of masks.”

He fell in love with the pizza. “But by year three, I was starting to get that itch again,” said Bodden, who then embarked on opening a spot called Linden Hall in Carpinteria. “We were a fully realized restaurant,” he said of all the practice pop-ups they executed. But that fell through due to licensing and permit issues. 

“Everything worked out so well and easy for Revolver. I believed that if I just believed in it enough, it would become something,” he said. “And I got really close, but it ended up coming out of my hands.” 

The public nature of that failure in early 2024 was embarrassing. “By the time that whole thing ended, I clammed up,” he said. “I just went behind the scenes. I hardly even put my face out in Revolver. I really retreated.”

He’d become friends with Scott Sampler by then, and they’d bounce wacky ideas off each other. “He’s the perfect kind of weirdo for what I’m doing and who I am,” confirmed Bodden. 

That included the Pyramid Burger, which is based on one of Sampler’s childhood fantasies. (Another one was El Sandweech, which is now a wine.) “And no one’s really done a triangular burger,” explained Sampler. “When the going gets absurd, the absurd turn pro!” But it took a long time to convince Bodden. 

“I was really just dragging my feet,” said Bodden. “He kept on pushing me.”

Then Bodden took a long overdue trip to New York. “It was so refreshing and cool,” he said, “I truly love the experience of going to a proper restaurant, no matter how fine or low it is.” The itch and his confidence were back, and along came Trixy. 

“It’s what I thought Linden Hall would have been,” he said. “That’s where we’re at.”

The burger, which is indeed a triangle and features house-made giardiniera, is great. “It’s honestly been the best-selling thing on the menu,” said Bodden, who worked on it with Sampler for a full year. (It is one of the only dishes I know that has its own Instagram account, @pyramidburgerworld.) The chips that come with it taste somehow like Corn Flakes, and the Valentina hot-sauce-spiked Uncle Caesar salad is a bit revelatory. The rest of the menu slowly morphs every couple of months.

“I see it as one conceptual art piece,” he said of Trixy, whose vérité-esque photography is part of the vibe. 

Might it lead to a new restaurant? “I’m starting to get that feeling again, which is a bit of PTSD,” he said. “I feel like I might want to open up a restaurant, unfortunately. That’s really what excites me.”

Trixy, the Pyramid Burger, and Salon des Refuses take over Revolver Pizza (1429 San Andres St.; [805] 679-5818; revolversb.com) next on October 20 and November 3 and 10. For the latest updates, and a deeper peek into these minds, check Instagram at @revolversb and @trixy_sb and @salondesrefuses and @pyramidburgerworld.