The first official TMNT pizzeria opens June 20, and the staff dress as Foot Clan ninjas
Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizzeria is now soft-open on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, with sewer-lair decor.
Cowabunga, the Turtles got a restaurant. A real one.
The first official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizzeria is soft-open right now at 1444 Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, with the grand opening set for June 20 at 11 a.m. Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo are all promised for opening day.
It’s the first of three. Paramount announced the concept in February, with sister locations slated for Monterrey, Mexico and São Paulo, Brazil.
And yes, the bit is fully committed. The chefs wear aprons themed to one of the four turtles. The floor staff dress as Foot Clan ninjas, the turtles’ sworn enemies, the henchmen who answer to Shredder. So your pizza is cooked by a Turtle and served by the bad guys. Honestly, respect.
Inside the Santa Monica TMNT Pizzeria
The space leans hard into the 1980s comics and cartoon. Think the turtles’ sewer lair: neon signage everywhere, fake ooze dripping down the walls, oversized lava lamps, and a free standup Ninja Turtles arcade cabinet in the corner.
There’s wall-to-wall memorabilia, exclusive on-site merch (keychains, shirts, pins), and interactive photo spots. A bar in the back pours themed cocktails on weekends, which the local writeups gently noted is for “the impatient parents.”
The 3,000-square-foot spot was built with Paramount Products & Experiences and the Lunchbox Group. It sits in the former home of Johnnie’s New York Pizzeria, a real shuttered slice joint, on a Third Street Promenade that’s been struggling to fill storefronts. A themed restaurant pulling foot traffic to a fading outdoor mall is its own small story.
The pizza is shockingly legit
Here’s the part that surprised me. The turtles canonically eat pizza topped with marshmallows, jellybeans, and peanut butter, so the bar for a TMNT restaurant was basically on the floor. They cleared it by a mile.
The menu was developed by Brooklyn pizzaiolo Angelo Womack, whose résumé includes Roberta’s, Scarr’s, Mama’s Boy, and Oak & Rye. This is a real New York-slice guy, not a mascot consultant.
The pies use hand-stretched mozzarella, a three-day dough ferment, Stanislaus tomatoes, and, the detail that sells it, water with the pH adjusted to mirror New York City tap. Somebody chemically engineered the water to fake a New York slice in California. That’s the kind of obsessive nonsense that actually works.
No marshmallow pizza on the menu, sadly. They went classic.
Why Paramount is building Ninja Turtle restaurants
The pizzeria isn’t a one-off gimmick. It’s one piece of a deliberate franchise push.
Paramount brought on Josh Silverman last fall as president of global products and experiences, a guy who did stints at Disney, Marvel, and Mattel. The restaurants are his location-based-entertainment play, the same theme-park-adjacent logic every IP holder is chasing now: turn the brand into a place people drive to, not just a thing they watch.
The timing tracks with the Turtles being hot again after Mutant Mayhem reintroduced them to a new generation. The restaurant is the merch-and-experience tail wagging behind that movie’s success.
The man behind the build is Andy Nguyen, a serial themed-dining entrepreneur whose previous concepts include a One Piece Cafe and a Sonic the Hedgehog Speed Cafe. He’d been teasing this one since mid-2025, calling it “years in the making.“ For a guy who specializes in turning cartoons into restaurants, a sewer lair that serves real New York pizza might be his masterpiece.
If you’re anywhere near the Promenade on the 20th, the first 100 customers get exclusive opening-day items, and four guys in turtle suits will be there. Bring the kids. Bring your appetite. Just maybe don’t ask the Foot Clan ninja for extra napkins.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (theme park editor) and the Pirates and Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Santa Monica Daily Press (June 2026), verified for the Johnnie’s location, the soft-opening timeline, the Lunchbox Group partnership, and the Josh Silverman franchise-expansion context
LA Mag (June 2026), verified for the 3,000-square-foot size, the Paramount Products & Experiences and Lunchbox collaboration, and pizzaiolo Angelo Womack’s menu pedigree
L.A. TACO (June 2026), Hadley Tomicki’s hands-on visit, verified for the sewer-lair decor, the arcade cabinet, and the New York-pH water and three-day-ferment dough details
KTLA (June 2026), verified for the June 20 grand-opening date, the address, and the turtle character appearances
Dexerto (June 11, 2026), Nathan Warby’s reporting, verified for the Foot Clan staff costumes and the international location plans
Yahoo/AOL (June 2026), verified for the June 20 opening time and Andy Nguyen’s prior themed-restaurant track record