Food
You can tell yourself it’s just pizza. You can square the box on your passenger seat and drive home thinking it’s going to be the usual — cheese, sauce, crust, maybe something spicy if you’re feeling bold.
But Pizza Twist in El Sobrante doesn’t work like that.
This small shop tucked into the strip mall across from the Dollar Tree doesn’t serve pizza so much as reinterpret it, turning familiar ingredients into something wild, whimsical, and delicious.
Pizza Twist is an Indian fusion pizza chain with a growing number of Bay Area locations, including this outpost on the San Pablo Dam Road. The restaurant’s name isn’t a marketing gimmick — it’s a promise. You are not here for pepperoni and ranch dressing. You are here for bold flavors, serious spice, and pizzas that taste like the food you didn’t know you craved.
Inside the restaurant, designed in the sports bar eclectic motif, Bhai Manpreet Singh Ji Kanpur Wale is on screen melodiously reciting the daily prayer while another screen has the news on mute. It is calm and empty midweek at lunchtime.
We ordered the number one bestseller, Tandoori Chicken Pizzatwist. We apparently have strict rules about pizza, which are lightly followed.
You open the box, and it’s all there: the browned crust, the golden cheese, the confident scatter of mushrooms and red onions. But something’s different. The smell isn’t oregano or tomato. It’s ginger. Garlic. Maybe coriander. And something you can’t quite place until you take a bite.
Instead of tomato sauce, you’re greeted by something warmer, deeper, more complex — Pizza Twists tandoori sauce, creamy and glowing orange, creeping across your tongue with a confident heat.
The pie is topped with mozzarella, chicken, red onion, mushrooms, garlic, green chilies (or were those jalapeños?), and finished with chopped cilantro.
That first bite was so surprising and so delicious, we are a little jealous of the next person to eat this spicy pizza for the first time.
In the before-time at the office, we always picked Indian food for our lunch meetings: butter chicken, aloo gobi, curry of all sorts, tikka masala, and mango lassi. Homer Simpson drooling, "mmmm." We love it all.
The crust is thin, surprisingly crisp, and lightly dusted with cornmeal. It holds up well, even under the weight of the sauce and heavier toppings.
The spice level matters here. We chose “Spicy” (one step below “Extra Spicy”) and found ourselves dabbing our foreheads between bites. There’s heat in the sauce, yes, but also in the scattered chilies. It’s a hot pizza—not unbearable, but insistent.
“This isn’t for a kid’s party,” someone at our table said after their second slice and a third gulp of water. That feels right. This pizza isn’t trying to be universally appealing. It’s spicy. It’s specific. It has a point of view.
Even the cilantro garnish adds a fresh contrast that elevates the bite, with everything on the pie feeling deliberate. Cilantro? On a pizza? Just go with it.
The menu is broad. There are paneer pizzas. Palak (spinach) pizzas. Achari gobi (pickled cauliflower) pizzas. There’s even a Tandoori Pasta section and desi-spiced wings. But the pizza is clearly the star, and the fusion combinations are what keep people coming back.
Prices hover around $25 – $30 for a large specialty pie — not the cheapest on the Richmond Pizza Trail, but understandable given the ingredient quality and sheer novelty. You’re not paying for pepperoni. You’re paying for a new experience.
Is Pizza Twist for everyone? Probably not. Will everyone call it pizza? That depends on your definition.
But for those open to trying something new—and those who love both pizza and Indian food—it’s an unexpected delight. A familiar format with an unfamiliar flavor. A reminder that the best meals aren’t always about comfort. Sometimes they’re about surprise.
This wraps up the Richmond Pizza Trail, and the Richmond Burrito Trail returns next week.
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