FoodWaterShoes

Wandering around the Monterey Bay Aquarium learning about all of the creatures who live in the deep ocean can make you famished. Thankfully family owned and operated Tricycle Pizza in Monterey, California is located just a couple blocks from the aquarium on the corner of Lighthouse and David Avenues.

Tricycle Pizza has been serving wood fired pizza and meals on wheels since 2012. Five years ago, Tricycle Pizza’s owner and Monterey local, Danica Alvarado, decided to take one of her favorite dishes (pizza) and turn it into a booming business. Alvarado and the Tricycle Pizza crew were mobile for fours years before they finally decided to put down roots at their current location. The name Tricycle Pizza comes from the fact that Alvarado’s first mobile oven used to make the rounds via a three wheeled trailer.

Watching your pizza get made in the on site pizza truck is part of the fun. You’ll catch glimpses of your grub through the glass walls of the mobile kitchen since each pie is hand stretched and then popped into the stunning wood fired oven located in the truck parked in Tricycle Pizza’s lot. All of Tricycle Pizza’s yummy pies are cooked fresh and made to order.

With temperatures inside the oven reaching upwards of 900 degrees it should come as no surprise that Tricycle Pizza’s crusts have unique flavors and textures that other ovens just can’t quite compete with.

In addition to Tricycle Pizza, here’s a list of other neat little local spots we love across the Bay Area and Silicon Valley.

The crust is light and airy. It’s chewy with just the right amount of charring to it.

All of the pizzas come in ten inch pies. (If you share your pizza with another person, it makes the perfect snack. You can also opt to chow down on a whole pizza yourself since it ends up being roughly a personal/individual size pizza.) We decided to go with Tricycle Pizza’s pepperoni jalapeño pizza which was made with an organic tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and parmesan cheese, organic oregano, artisan pepperoni and some perfectly pickled jalapeños. There was no line when we swung by, so our order only took about five minutes, but expect the average wait time for a pizza to be around 10 to15 minutes.

Since we love spicy food, we decided to kick things up a notch. If you’re a fan of flaming the fire a bit more, don’t forget to pop a dollop of Tricycle Pizza’s homemade spicy chili oil on your plate. The oil consists of organic extra virgin olive oil, chiles de árbol, sea salt, crushed red pepper and makes an amazing dipping sauce for your pizza crust. We’re fairly certain the oil would also taste fabulous on pasta, salad, veggies or a hunk of fresh bread too. (Tricycle Pizza sells their tasty oil by the bottle, so you can bring a little souvenir from Monterey back home with you.)

You can opt to eat your masterpiece in the casual family style dining room…

…or a kid friendly backyard patio. With a name like Tricycle Pizza, it should come as no surprise that the restaurant is kid friendly (there is even a pretend pizza making station for kids on the back patio).

Tricycle Pizza only accepts walk in orders. It’s worth noting that there are no delivery, phone order or reservation options and they no longer provide catering.

Tricycle Pizza is pet friendly, so you can bring your furry family member along for a slice of puperoni as long as their human is leashed.

Tricycle Pizza
899 Lighthouse Avenue
Monterey, California 93940
Hours: Wednesday Through Friday 3:00pm to 9:00pm, Saturday 12:00pm to 9:00pm
Phone: (831) 204-0730
Email: info@tricyclepizza.com
Pricing (All in USD): Individual Sized Wood-Fired Pizzas $11.00 to $13.00, Spicy Chili Oil $11.00