Company Description

We're back at the beach with our Rusty's Lighthouse Museum & Restaurant! Enjoy our expanded salad bar as well our extensive collection of Lighthouse artifacts. Wander up State St. after your visit to Stearns Wharf. We look forward to serving you!

The Rusty's Story

How did Rusty’s Pizza Parlor get its name?

Just a stones throw away from the Santa Barbara coast, two young entrepreneurs, Roger and Carol Duncan scrapped enough money together to open “Rusty’s Roast Beef” in Isla Vista - the year was 1969. Before their restaurant journey began, Roger was a produce manager in a local grocery store & Carol was busy teaching at Mountain View Elementary & caring for their two young girls.

Exploring their new home town of Santa Barbara, they found that their was no pizza place to take their kids - A dream was born! They set their sights on creating a restaurant that served the highest quality pizza with great service and tons of family fun for the community.

This lofty goal came with a lot of trial and error in the kitchen - Hobart mixer manual in hand, Roger labored over creating the perfect crust (yes!)... while Carol experimented endlessly with spices and herbs for the now famous mouthwatering pizza sauce. Together they explored the best combinations of toppings to create the PERFECT PIZZA!

Finally...they were ready to introduce their pizza to Santa Barbara- but what would they call it? The sign outside boldly read
“Rusty’s Roast Beef” and changing the entire sign was financially out of the question. There was only one creative solution - pull out the hand saw, cut the sign in half
leave the “Rusty’s” and add “Pizza Parlor”....The rest, as they say, is pizza history.

Moving into the ’70’s, the owners of Rusty’s wanted to share their pizza with the rest of Santa Barbara ~ along came 2 more locations in the family-friendly neighborhoods of San Roque (Upper State Street) and the East side (North Milpas).

Always looking for unique family activities and ways to contribute to the Santa Barbara community, famous cartoonist Frank Webb lead free drawing classes at the State Street location every week. Mr. Webb would draw a letter of the alphabet and each child would follow along to learn how to magically turn their letters into animals. Can you spot ‘Carol’s Frog Pond’ and a ‘Slam Dunk’ basketball player in “The Frank Webb Room?”

Both the State Street and Milpas locations entertained customers with black and white silent films accompanied by a piano player. Felix the Cat, Charlie Chaplin & The Three Stooges were some of the line-up of films shown at the pizza parlors. Check back again soon for more memories of Rusty’s #therustysstory on Instagram, FaceBook & Twitter!

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