Located at 6576 Trigo Road, Mesa Pizza opened its doors on Saturday, Oct. 4, bringing a distinctive take on the neighborhood pizza parlor to Isla Vista. The restaurant is a long-established family business that has served slices in Santa Barbara’s Mesa neighborhood for three decades.
Mesa Pizza has served slices in Santa Barbara’s Mesa neighborhood for three decades and blends flavors from Italian, South African and Indian cuisines. Courtesy of Viran Singh
Owned and operated by Virandra Singh and his sons, Vir Singh and Visha Singh, Mesa Pizza specializes in pies that blend flavors and spices from Italian, South African and Indian cuisines.
“We are of South African origin and of Indian ethnicity with some French,” Virandra said. “We brought those backgrounds of spices in our food, and together with my brother Raj and my wife Rekha, we took our Italian spices and blended it with our bread.”
The Singh family has owned the building on Trigo Road since 1998, but have not used it as a retail space for about 20 years.
“Originally, my brother Suresh and his then wife opened a South African Indian restaurant at that location and called it Cafe Nirvana,” Virandra said. “After a few years, it closed due to various circumstances.”
Before the Singhs purchased the property, from 1968 to 1981, the building was home to Sun and Earth Natural Foods Garden Restaurant, a vegetarian restaurant and grocery store owned by UC Santa Barbara alum Bob McDonald and Santa Barbara City College alum Ric Smith. The establishment had a particular appeal to the hippie counterculture of the time.
According to Virandra, various culturally significant individuals spent time at Sun and Earth, including Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a propagator of transcendental meditation.
“Yoga, as the West knows it, was brought into the U.S. in the late 60s, early 70s, by a person by the name of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,” Virandra said. “He lived in El Colegio, and through him, yoga became big in the U.S. He used to visit the Sun and Earth store very often.”
Other prominent visitors of the Sun and Earth store included Santa Barbara native Edie Sedgwick — an actress, model and socialite — and Andy Warhol, known today as a leading figure in the pop art movement of the mid-20th century.
“You may have heard of Andy Warhol,” Virandra said. “Well, Andy Warhol was dating Edie Sedgwick from Santa Barbara, and they would meet at the Sun and Earth also. So the building has got a lot of incredible history, and we’re hoping to make great new historical memories also.”
Today, Mesa Pizza pays homage to Sun and Earth with an outdoor seating area that emulates a zen-like garden, complete with gazebos, greenery and a fountain. Virandra said that he wanted to create an environment that reflected his interest in Buddhism, as well as his Hindu and Sikh faith.
“Buddha was actually of Indian Hindu origin, and that’s prompted us to always be part of the Buddhist community,” he said. “Buddhism is one path that the whole world identifies with because they promote peace and the answers found upon self reflection. That concept of thinking is what attracted me to the zen-like Buddhist philosophy.”
He also said that he wanted the store to serve the community as an “all for one and one for all” space, so he invited religious leaders to the opening night to perform informal blessings.
“We had a pastor, a rabbi, an imam and a Tibetan lama — all interfaith people — coming in there to start off this place because it’s going to be used by all different religious and cultural communities and organizations to come showcase the beauty of each of their cultures and religions,” Virandra said.
For Vir and Visha, both UCSB alumni, the goal for Mesa Pizza was to create an “elevated, food hangout experience.”
“We wanted it to be everything that we would have wanted to have while we were students here,” Vir said.
Beyond the location’s history, Virandra said that Mesa Pizza stands out from competitors because of fresh ingredients and flavor that make them high quality.
“We are using 100% pure mozzarella cheese, sauces that are not made from concentrate. We cut our meats and buy our veggies locally as much as possible,” Virandra said.
Additionally, Vir cited the unique flavors offered as an advantage over other local pizza places.
“You cannot get pizzas that we sell anywhere else because of our sauces that we make and just the type of food that we present,” Vir said. “So although it’s pizza, the flavor is so unique to us that that’s what differentiates us.”
Overall, the Singhs hope that Mesa Pizza will become a place where the UCSB and Isla Vista community can come together to enjoy food and connect.
“It is a place for the local community, the lecturers, the undergraduates and the [graduate] students alike to come to a safe, beautiful, serene, peaceful environment to have a glass of wine or a pizza and enjoy it in all its beauty and serenity,” Virandra said.
A version of this article appeared on p. 4 of the Oct. 16, 2025 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
