Jeovany Tzilin Gomez
Staff Writer
Isla Vista’s (I.V.) new pizzeria, Mesa Pizza, opened this fall, sharing a cultural history through organic food to serve the community in and out of I.V.. The original owner of Mesa Pizza, Viranda Singh, shared his reasons for promoting organic food, building a healthy work environment, and working on humanitarian projects in his homeland, South Africa.
The pizzeria opened on Saturday, Oct. 4, serving a variety of pizzas with ingredients and flavors influenced by South African, French Creole, and Dutch cuisines. Singh operates the business with his sons Vir and Vishay Singh.
In an interview with The Bottom Line (TBL), Singh mentioned how Mesa Pizza was originally an environmentally conscious grocery store called Sun and Earth in 1998, focusing on being vegetarian. Singh also mentioned how celebrities would come to live in I.V. like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the yoga influencer, and Andy Warhol, a visual artist. Singh said, “[After Sun and Earth,] my brother opened the restaurant here called Cafe Nirvana. So everything you’re seeing [inside of Mesa Pizza] is 25 years old. Incredible condition.”
Singh stated that when his brother passed on the property to him, he wanted to renovate the place after past experiences owning other pizzerias and learning the history of I.V.. Singh said, “We always wanted to redo this place… So we thought, let’s give back to the community. Let’s turn the backyard into a place where it will be great for postgraduates, lecturers, students, and the community to come by in a safe, clean, beautiful, zen-like type atmosphere, with excellent food.”
Singh emphasized their model of serving food made from organic ingredients and how they don’t compromise their food quality for high sales despite prices going up. Singh said, “We’ve never compromised on our taste and our quality of ingredients. Never lessened it because prices were going up. And that proved to be our lasting reason why we outdid everyone else.” He also mentioned that the recipes came from his brother Raj Singh and his wife Rekha Singh.
Singh started learning about the trends of current businesses where each business sold a single item or a group of similar products like a coffee shop and a sandwich shop. Their original menu had a lot of items like pasta and salads, but Singh decided to cut them off and “[their] sales continued to be the same or a little higher. It gave the staff more efficiency in just lining, making a line just for pizzas,” he stated.
Singh also told TBL that he helps his employees have a flexible schedule, especially when they are working in different locations owned by him, making it financially lucrative for them. He stated, “Your coworkers are number one. Your customer is number two,” meaning that he wants his coworkers to feel comfortable working so that they can better serve and satisfy customers.
The profits from Mesa Pizza are going towards a universal prayer palace for the elderly in South Africa, a humanitarian project that Singh and his family are working on.
One of Mesa Pizza’s customers, Anthony Bautista, appreciated the friendly atmosphere in the restaurant for the abundance of space for people to sit and eat. Bautista said, “There can be a lot of people outside because there’s a back patio. There’s a stage for potential musical events.” Bautista, however, wished that Mesa Pizza served desserts and hosted time for karaoke.
Singh concluded by saying that he will continue to improve the restaurant experience of Mesa Pizza and continue supporting his humanitarian efforts, in and out of the kitchen. Singh said, “We hope soon we are given the green light to go ahead and do what we want to do in the [backyard] and to achieve those milestones that we set out. It’s not just food for your belly, but it’s food for your soul.”