A selection of pizzas from Windsor's PizzaLeah
photo credit: PizzaLeah Facebook page

 Eat pizza, support a good cause! That’s one of the things you can do to celebrate the first-ever North Bay Pizza Week, kicking off on January 8th.

Event organizer Lisa Santos says the week is meant to highlight restaurants and inspire creativity.

“The participants will market specials. Some of them are coming up with specialty pizzas for the week," said Santos.

One of the pizzerias with special menu items is PizzaLeah, the Windsor restaurant owned by award-winning Chef Leah Scurto. Chef Scurto is pairing with a local social media influencer to create two pizza specials, both of which will generate funds for a local charity called Farm to Pantry.

“Farm to Pantry is a non-profit organization in Sonoma County that helps fight food insecurity locally. One of the big things they do is they glean excess produce from farms and backyards and that sort of thing," explained Chef Scurto.

The gleaned food is donated to food banks, thereby reducing food waste and feeding communities.

Chef Scurto says the new North Bay Pizza Week could be a boon to local restaurants.

“It’s a beautiful way to make what is normally one of the slowest times of the year for restaurants, to actually make something fun happen and bring in some business," Chef Scurto said.

There are over 30 restaurants in Sonoma, Marin, and Napa counties participating from January 8th through the 19th, which is technically longer than a week, but does coincide with National Pizza Week.

Details are online at NorthBayPizzaWeek.com