Rick Mahan was shaping hand-rolled pizza dough for Friday's lunch rush at his newest restaurant, One Speed, when a customer brought in tomatoes fresh from the garden.

The plump red fruit later found its way onto a Caprese salad -- almost as quickly as pizza had made its way into the chef's heart. Mahan said he's been dreaming about creating a pizza place since opening The Waterboy in Midtown nearly 13 years ago.

"I've never gotten over my pizza fascination," said Mahan, one of two pizza cooks cranking out pie after pie. "For me, the most satisfying thing to cook from start to finish is pizza. I've cooked everything over the years and I've loved it. This is proving to be a very satisfying thing."

Although the 48-year-old likes to call the restaurant at 4818 Folsom Blvd. his "little pizza joint," this is no corner pizzeria. The upscale-minimalist East Sacramento space opened in June to serve artisan pizzas, hand-made pastas and other fare using as much locally grown food as possible.

Local and organic is even better, he said. Dressed in shorts, tennis shoes, a baseball cap and black One Speed T-shirt, Mahan blended with the rest of the fast-moving cooks working in the open kitchen behind a 26-foot-long granite counter.

During Friday's lunch, he made pizzas, cut five pounds of pasta for lunch and dinner, helped the pastry assistant make raspberry bread pudding and oversaw everything and everyone in the restaurant, tucked between a hardware store and yoga studio in the space where Cafe Milazzo used to be. Mahan said he's spending most of his time at One Speed.

"It's a big event to get a restaurant opened and running the way I want it," he said.

Just over a week ago, the restaurant's hours expanded to include lunch. One Speed is now open 11:30 a.m. - 10 p.m. every day except Monday. Sunday breakfast may be added soon.

And with Mahan bringing his standards to the place, One Speed isn't likely to be East Sacramento's secret for long.

"It's the new hottest restaurant," said Sean Kohmescher, owner of Temple coffee and tea houses. "The foodies all know it's there."

But why the name "One Speed"?

"All the good pizza restaurant names were taken," said Mahan, smiling. Actually, he chose the name partly because he loves bikes with fixed gears. Mahan collects them.

"The name 'One Speed' refers to my affection for Schwinn one-speed bikes," he said. "It's also a token towards the slow-food movement and just enjoying a good meal with family or friends, rather than wolfing food down while sitting in your car."

Pizzas are even delivered using a single-speed, heavy-duty, Dutch delivery bike. The restaurant's bike decor is subtle: metal gears hang from pendulum lights and combine with round mirrors to function as wall art. Later, water-bottle cases will be repurposed into pepper grinder holders and wine bottle displays.

"I wanted a place with a casual vibe, but the food and service is no different than The Waterboy," said Mahan.

Behind the bar, One Speed General Manager Michael Ng peeled and chopped white peaches to make the classic Italian cocktail known as a Bellini.

"We like to do it right, because the peaches literally came off the tree this morning. That's why I was five minutes late. I was picking peaches," Ng said. "That's what Rick's all about, too. It's got to be fresh. It's got to be good."

Mahan has cultivated a following in Sacramento because he creates inventive food using the best ingredients he can find. And because he's always "tweaking" the food, the menu and the service to be better, said Ng.

"He has so much passion for what he does. He never goes stagnant because he's always trying to find a better way to do anything," he said. "I think that's the sign of a great businessman, a great chef, a great person -- you don't settle."

Mahan got started in the restaurant business as a 16-year-old washing dishes. He worked at a little family restaurant in Carmichael, where he grew up. The family passed their love for the restaurant business on to Mahan.

At 19, he left for San Francisco to work as a chef's apprentice at The St. Francis hotel. Three years later, the company wanted to send him to its new hotel in Boston. He returned to Sacramento to kill time while waiting for the hotel to open.

Mahan started working at an inventive little restaurant called Cafe Natoma in Folsom in 1984. The cafe joined other restaurants on the cutting edge of the California Cuisine movement. Mahan quickly cast off the classic French style so dependent on heavy sauces for lighter, fusion fare using fresh ingredients.

A year later, he went to work as the chef at Paragary's Bar and Oven. In 1988, he and a partner took over a struggling Paragary's (now Zinfandel Grille) on Fair Oaks Boulevard. They built another in Folsom in 1991 and opened that with Randy Paragary as a partner.

Mahan later opened Cafe Oaxaca and Cantina on Fair Oaks Boulevard before he created The Waterboy. He wanted to make pizza at The Waterboy, but the kitchen couldn't handle a big pizza oven.

One Speed's pizza starts with four ingredients that are mixed and hand-rolled and then allowed to ferment and develop flavor overnight. To keep the dough consistent, only Mahan and two others are currently allowed to make dough. During Friday's lunch rush, he taught pizza cook Christie Randolph how to shape the dough into a pizza pie.

The pies were laid onto a wooden paddle and placed into a double-stacked Marsal and Sons gas pizza oven from the East Coast. Valentino Fernandez, once a waiter working for Mahan, turned the oven into a centerpiece by hand-tiling it in a yellow mosaic. As beautiful as it is, the oven's not the secret to good pizza, Mahan said.

"I think the most important thing behind a good pizza is the people making it," said Mahan, who's spent two years developing the pizza dough recipe.

True to form, he's still making it better.