Love for pizza may be universal, but chef David Murphy is looking for a challenge, and hoping to educate more diners about food waste with a new menu and a pivot at his three-year-old Mission restaurant.

It's a season of change over at Shuggie's Trash Pie & Natural Wine, which is planning to close on August 16 for a quick remodel and retooling of the menu, which is no longer going to involve pizza. For those fans of chef David Murphy's "grandma-style" rectangular pies, there will still be the pizza-esque Cacio e Pepe Pillow on offer, but Murphy plans to pivot to an "immersive dinner club" format with a menu featuring more aspects of whole-harvest cooking, and "lower-on-the-food-chain proteins."

Shuggie's debuted in 2022, having grown out of the food-waste activism of Murphy and his partner Kayla Abe. The couple previously ran a small business called Ugly Pickle Co., which utilized misshapen and unwanted vegetables — like those sold by delivery services Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market — for pickles.

The restaurant opened with a stated mission of "rescuing a huge variety of ingredients that would otherwise go to waste — irregular or surplus produce, byproducts from food manufacturing, lower-on-the-food-chain seafood, and offcuts from the meat industry (aka the actual best cuts) — and making them the stars of our menu." And it quickly gained popularity and attention, even landing on Bon Appetit's Best New Restaurants list the following year.

But, Murphy says, it's become a bit too pigeonholed as a pizza spot, which has clouded the mission.

"When we opened during the pandemic, pizza was a very approachable way to introduce people to the idea of a food waste restaurant," Murphy says. "But as a chef, I started feeling creatively limited. Often diners would just order the square pizzas and garlic knots, and all of the incredible supply chain work we were doing with farmers and producers wasn't really being showcased.
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So, come late August, the restaurant will reopen as just Shuggie's, with the Trash Pies part dropped, and a totally new menu featuring dishes like a bone-in wild boar chop served schnitzel-style (Murphy notes that wild boar are "the largest wild animal contributors to climate change"), and "steak frites three ways" that utilizes off cuts like beef heart.

The restaurant had already been branching out beyond pizza, with Murphy hosting an annual crawfish boil in May, and an ambitious New Year's Eve "house party" dinner that featured a 50-pound roast pig. Also, in case you missed it, Murphy appeared on Season 21 of Top Chef, the Wisconsin edition, that aired in 2024.

Abe is overseeing a design change as well, with the bright yellow front dining room getting softened a bit with a new coat of orange, and a new fountain. Abe describes the change of look as "less retro diner, more Old Vegas."

We can expect more menu details later next month, and the last call for pizza, once again, is August 16. Find reservations here.