Two-for-One Beer All Day Saturday at Pleasure Pizza

Call it a long shakeout period.

On Saturday, Pleasure Pizza will celebrate its new location at 800 41st Ave., a few months after it began serving food, with two-for-one pints of beer all day, music and a party.

Owner Derek Rupp bought the location in February, after leaving as executive chef at Google. He started with takeout pizza at 4000 Portola Drive, and added a second location when Hanks on the Hook closed, which serves full meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner at the new location, and has one of the best patios in Santa Cruz.

"I wanted get the menu dialed in before doing a grand opening," said Rupp. "My previous employment was with Google, and they have a long history of being in beta."

The restaurant features local food, in keeping with Google's famous gourmet dining preferences. Google is known as one of the best places to eat in Silicon Valley, and food in its dining room is free for employees.

 "Roughly 70 percent of all our produce is organic and almost everything is produced locally," said Rupp. "All of our tomatoes used in our pizza sauce, for example, are organic and locally grown, and we use only naturally raised chicken, non-rBGH milk and locally sourced, cage-free eggs."

Pizza can be healthy and still taste great, he said.

But there's much more than pizza at the new location.

Check the menu here.

My own favorite is the Abyss, a big plate of pesto pasta with prawns for $11.99.

For tourists, Pleasure Pizza is a couple of blocks from great surf viewing at the end of 41st Avenue—the East Side's version of Steamer Lane—a great place to watch wetsuited wonders challenge the waves.

And for bacon lovers, Rupp has a new special starting today: free bacon on any dish all day Thursday.