Third-Generation Pizza Empire Goes Roman Style

For a few minutes, my family along with a group of women playing mah-jongg have the patio to ourselves. The quiet doesn’t last long. For a Monday, the new Roman-style pizza shop on Calle Real is surprisingly busy. Soon enough, families come in and out of the former Home Plate Grill to pick up long boxes of uniquely flavored pies, Florentine-style sandwiches, and soft serve. 

Just weeks into opening, PEGASLICE has already settled comfortably into Goleta’s Ellwood Heights. It seems like everyone has the same idea — to try out the new spot from Giovanni’s family scion McLeod Nooormand, the 24-year-old Roman pizza masterclass graduate who grew up under the helm of local pizza legend Albert Noormand, his grandfather. 

“I’ve been working in restaurants pretty much my whole life,” says Noormand, “but really got into it working at my dad’s restaurant, Giovanni’s Pizza, in Carpinteria. I just fell in love with restaurants — loved everything about it.”

That experience, plus a trip to Las Vegas in which he stumbled upon master pizzaiolo Massimiliano Saieva‘s live demo during the International Pizza Expo, led Noormand to a classroom in Connecticut. For three days, Noormand studied under Saieva and his unique take on Roman-style pizza. The result, many years and test pizzas later, is PEGASLICE. 

Like other pizzerias in Rome, where Noormand first fell in love with this style of pizza, a glass case houses a line of long rectangular pies. Noormand built his menu around things he loves, so while there’s a few standard pizzas such as pepperoni and margherita, it’s the rotating specials that I gravitate toward. We pick up a bianco, topping heavy with mushrooms, jalapeño, chives, and garlic, as well as the spicy vodka eggplant parm, which starts with a homemade vodka sauce based along with sweet eggplant and homemade chili crunch. 

The way the Florentine sandwiches were described when Noormand and I sat down earlier that day meant there was no way I was walking away without one. The Florentina sandwich, filled with a fistful of arugula, prosciutto, and truffle cream, was too good to pass up. The truffle cream oozed out of the homemade bread, which was soft and had a wonderful extra-virgin olive oil layer of crunch to its exterior.

It’s clear from just these four slices alone that Noormand has a taste for spice. The crust is at once delicate while also offering a wonderful crunch, and the dough is hearty enough to hold the entire slice, thick with toppings, without slumping over. Each bite offers an explosion of flavor with rich cream sauce, fresh vegetables, and a kick. 

Noormand’s Roman-style pizza is unique, and specifically the method Massimiliano Saieva teaches in his Roman PizzaLab classes. “What makes my approach different is that I focus very deeply on the technical side of Roman pizza. For me, it’s not simply about making a rectangular pizza with a crispy crust. There is a precise balance between hydration, fermentation, mixing, dough temperature, handling, baking, and the final texture,” Saieva told me via email. “My goal is to achieve a pizza that is extremely light and airy inside, with a thin, crisp exterior and a very distinctive structure.” 

To that end, Noormand — who Saieva says was “motivated, curious, and a serious student” — ferments his dough for 72 hours, which makes it lighter and easier on the body. For now, he’s sourcing locally when he can, and using Jordano’s and Tama Trading Co., though he hopes to introduce a farmers’ market pizza in the near future.

A month in business, and Noormand admits he hasn’t taken a full day off yet. That’s to be expected for a new restaurant owner, especially in these times, but hardly a typical day for a 24-year-old. “In every facet of life, you have to sacrifice one thing for another,” he says. “I’m sacrificing a little bit of my social life to start adulthood earlier.” 

When the opportunity presented itself to take over the former home of Home Plate Grill, which closed after 10 years of business, he couldn’t pass it up. The Santa Barbara native has been learning a lot about the new neighborhood, which was completely unfamiliar to him upon arrival. “I feel so welcomed,” he says. “I had no idea how huge [Ellwood Heights] was.” 

Locals are always intrigued by a new restaurant, and that’s allowed a steady stream of new faces to walk in the door of his retro American-style diner, but it’ll be the residents of Ellwood and its surrounding Goleta neighbors that keep the business going. After all, Noormand has big plans in store for PEGASLICE. 

“I’d love for PEGASLICE to be as big as an In-N-Out or a Chick-fil-A long term. But I’d like to be able to do it right and [I’m] really trying to develop a customer-service-based business,” he says. “I really feel like that’s the key to fast-casual restaurant business.” 

PEGASLICE, 7398 Calle Real, Ste. C, Goleta; pegaslice.com.