Impressions: Mozza2Go

Mozza2Go

6610 Melrose Av

Los Angeles, CA 90038
(323) 297-1130

(Photo: Jo Stougaard/My Last Bite)

I lived in Los Angeles, on and off, for eight years. During those 2,900 days I ate almost zero great pizzas. They just didn't exist there at the time. Sure, I had a lot of perfectly decent pizza, but who wants "decent"? As my time in LA was coming to a close, two culinary masters were hatching something Los Angeles hitherto had been woefully unfamiliar with: a truly great pizzeria, in Hollywood no less.

(Photos: clionline.org/superchefblog.com)

Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton need little introduction to food geeks. He's a world-class Italian chef with numerous restaurants and a force to be reckoned with on the Food Network's Iron Chef. She makes outstanding bread at her La Brea Bakery and has written several books on the subject of baking. Their collaboration, Mozza, is a fantastic pizzeria, the best in LA as far as I'm concerned.

(Photo: Clay Williams/ultraclay.com)

But I'm not discussing Mozza right now. I'm reviewing Mozza2Go, the spin-off that resulted from the mass popularity of that restaurant and its inability to meet the relentless demands of Angelinos craving top-notch pizza. In order to even get into Mozza you need a reservation, and that can usually only be obtained a month in advance (longer for a Friday or Saturday night). The place is so trendy that any thoughts of grabbing a Mozza pie on the whim are like that day in high school when you tripped in the hall and crashed to the floor in front of the really cute girls: best left repressed.

(all remaining photos by Adam Lindsley)

Mozza2Go solves that problem by offering the same pies on the Mozza menu (at the same price) in convenient, to go-only form via their shop around the corner on Melrose. They also offer plenty of high quality Italian ingredients along one wall, though most of these products come at a pretty substantial markup. There are no tables, chairs, or benches in or outside the tiny space, so you're pretty much forced to take the hot pizzas back home to eat (or, if you're like me, back to your rental car).

I tore into the Margherita ($13) first. The 10-inch pie has all the trappings of its full-restaurant counterpart, with its very wide and astoundingly puffy cornicione, bright red tomato sauce, patches of yellowing mozzarella, and tiny on-the-stem basil leaves (though I seem to remember a basil chiffonade last time instead of the whole-leaves-and-stem thing).

While the pie may bear a physical resemblance to its fancier brother, it in no way tastes like it, and every change is for the worse. The sauce is the biggest offender here. It's thick, pasty, and totally devoid of a tomato's natural brightness. The sauce had been spread on the pizza with a heavy hand, and it overpowered everything else despite its blandness.

The mozzarella didn't fare much better. It's flavorless, and unlike the mozz served in Pizzeria Mozza, it isn't soft at all. In fact, I'm not even sure whether it was fresh or aged. It lacked the texture of fresh and the saltiness of aged. It was just sort of...there. And the basil? Couldn't taste it.

I suspect the reason this pizza fell so flat is because the same people aren't making both restaurants' pies. There was just an amateurish air about it, from the sloppiness of the toppings to the undercooked underside of the crust. Thankfully, though, the flavor of that crust is just as superlative as I remembered. This is one of the great pizza crusts, echoing Silverton's award-winning bread in its excellence. It's so good that it you really could eat it on its own, sans toppings, and be completely satisfied. Every inch is dotted with raised fermentation blisters that release an audible snap when bitten into, giving way to a light, cavernous crumb that pushes the cornice as high as I've ever seen one go. It is, essentially, an Italian bread shaped into a saucer, and I could use those end crusts for sandwich bread and be happier with that than the bread at 95% of the bakeries in this country. It's that good.

My second pie was the Pizza alla Benno ($16), Silverton's son Ben's take on the Hawaiian pizza and one of the best you'll ever eat. The same oddly bland tomato sauce and mozzarella was bolstered by discs of pineapple sliced as thin as paper, arranged like sunbursts around the jalapenos, which pop in the mouth with a quick rupture of heat. Once the pie is removed from the oven, speck (a prosciutto-like, juniper-flavored, thinly sliced European ham) is draped over the pizza, allowing it to absorb some heat from the still-steaming toppings beneath it. The whole thing is then given a sprinkling of finely chopped chives.

This pizza really works. The fresh pineapples are very sweet but sliced thinly enough that they don't dominate the pie as canned pineapple so often does in American pizza parlors. The jalapenos deliver spikes of spiciness in small enough doses that your taste buds are stimulated but not set ablaze. And the speck brings a pleasantly light ham flavor to the pizza in substitution for the usual Canadian bacon, although you usually end up pulling off an entire strip with one bite. Thankfully they're not stingy with it.

I saved the best for last: the Meat Lover's ($18) is sensational. And sensationally greasy. But with all the meat on this pizza, it's inevitable. Bacon, salami, fennel sausage, and pancetta join forces to create something only a loveless, black hearted soul could find fault with: a veritable tapestry of meaty goodness. Coupled with that amazing crust, it's one of this world's great pizzas.

The standout is unquestionably the sausage. It's placed on the pizza in large walnut-sized chunks which are so soft and lightly constructed that they fall apart to the touch. They remind me more of fennel-laced meatballs than sausage; I recommend you break them apart with a fork and evenly distribute them across the pie for maximum enjoyment.

Mozza2Go is a great choice for those who don't feel like reserving your table weeks in advance or dealing with the full restaurant's snooty service. It's not perfect, and the pies are just a notch below those in the original Mozza (in the case of the Margherita, several notches below), but not so much that you're taking a drastic hit in quality. If you're in LA on an impromptu visit and love pizza, you absolutely cannot pass it up.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Pizza alla Benno, Meat Lover's

A Few Shots of My Pizzas

All right, Will, this is for you. Here are a few photos taken of the pizzas I made last night. I was actually really happy with these, and that's the only reason you're getting to see them! The dough was made with a sourdough starter and contains no commercial yeast. Sauce is a blend of San Marzanos and 6-in-1's.

All photos by my neighbor, Austin Haas, unless otherwise noted.

(photo by Adam Lindsley)

Events: Will Fain's Pizza Party

Host: Will Fain

Website: egadman.blogspot.com

(all photos by Adam Lindsley)

Will Fain is the only other person I've met in Portland who's as big of a pizza fanatic (read: total pizza geek) as I am. He's been providing pizza intel to Adam Kuban of Slice for a few years now, and was even interviewed for the weekly Pizza Obsessive feature on that site. We connected via this blog (you'll know him as Flushy McBucketpants in the comments here on TIP), and when he emailed me to let me know he'd be throwing a pizza party at his house, I jumped at the opportunity. Hey, I'm always willing to try someone else's pizza recipe, if for no other reason than to look for ways to improve my own experiments in the kitchen (i.e. outright steal any tricks they know that I don't). Plus, free pizza is free pizza.

Will's oven setup is probably a bit more complicated than yours at home. On the center rack is a sheet of aluminum foil, topped by a layer of bricks that acts to prevent massive heat loss whenever the oven door is opened. On the shelf above that is another sheet of foil, with the pizza stone placed on top of it. Will says the extra sheet of foil directly under the stone helps to bounce back some of the heat onto the pizza, creating a more evenly cooked pie.

The dough is homemade, naturally, which is a non-sourdough starter variation on Jeff Varasano's famous recipe. Will breaks away from Varasano further by allowing the dough a warm rise before the refrigerator ferment. This gives the dough a bubbly texture that's just itching to rise in the oven.

First up was Will's take on the Margherita. It boasts a sauce that's been cooked briefly to prevent soupiness, but not so much that it loses the brightness of the tomatoes (a process I too am beginning to find preferable to the uncooked variety, at least when it pertains to my homemade pies). The mozzarella melted wonderfully and didn't burn despite several minutes under the heat of broiler eight inches above it. The crust puffed up nicely around the cornicione. As I had predicted, the dough couldn't wait to start rising in the heat of the oven, and even grew some yummy black blisters toward the center of the pie. The crust had a nice saltiness to it, far more flavorful than some of the professionally made pizzas I've had elsewhere. Just a solid, solid Marg all round.

The pies that followed were just as or nearly as good as that, with a wide array of all-vegetarian toppings. One of the most interesting (but also very mildly flavored) toppings was a cashew cream, inspired by the offerings of his friends Aaron and Dinae's vegan restaurant, Portobello. But the standout, for me, was the stinging nettles. Boiled to remove their sting, then baked on the pizza, they made every bite in which they were present better.

Garlic, basil, leek, and cashew cream pie.

Between pizzas, I got to chat a bit with Will about his history and plans for the future. I learned he spent some time in New York, as well as New Zealand, working as a live-in caretaker there. He's also had experience working at a pizzeria, so he's quite familiar with the fast-paced kitchen environment.

As for the future, he's already designing his own wood-burning oven, and the supplies have been ordered (you better believe you're having me back once that's up and running, Will). He mentioned the possibility of opening a pizza cart, and perhaps creating some vegan pizzas for Portobello. Who knows--maybe you'll be plunking down some cash for Will's pizzas one day soon! If the pies he served us today were any indication, they'll be well worth it.

MORE PHOTOS:

Will prepping the leek & asparagus pie...

And here it is out of the oven. Look at that monster

blister on the cornicione!

Stinging nettles and hedgehog mushroom pie.

The Vegan: garlic, pine nuts, pesto, basil.

Will rocking the cutter. I gotta get me one a' those.

News: New Wood-Fired Pizza on Alberta?

So says the sign hung on the enclosed space next door to the Grilled Cheese Grill at NE 11th and Alberta. See for yourself:

(photo by Adam Lindsley)

I asked the guys at GCG about the new establishment, but they knew nothing of the goings-on taking place behind the red-and-white tarps.

If any of you out there know anything about it, please write in and let us know!

Impressions: Emilia's

Emilia's

2995 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94705
(510) 704-1794

(all photos by Adam Lindsley unless otherwise noted)

With my all-too-brief stay in San Francisco rapidly coming to a close, I had time to squeeze in one more pizzeria before having to say goodbye. Given the amount of praise I'd heard about the place, the choice was simple: Emilia's, the labor of love of owner and pizzaiolo Keith Freilich.

When we showed up about an hour after Emilia's opened, Freilich (doing everything--taking orders, prepping the pies, and cooking them--himself) told us there was an hour-and-a-half wait for pizza (had I read their website more closely, I would have seen that Keith recommends calling ahead well in advance). Hardly discouraged, we placed our order for a half plain/half sausage pie (yes...finally got my meat on this trip!), then spent the next ninety minutes driving around the UC Berkeley campus (Christa's alma mater) and picking up some beverages at the Whole Foods on Telegraph & Ashby. We returned, snagged one of the three tables inside, then waited patiently for the pizza to arrive. Noting the juxtaposition of Frank Sinatra with a stack of pizza boxes helped pass the time.

Once the huge 18-inch pie hit the table, I quickly snapped some photos, then dug into the plain (i.e. Margherita) half first, picking up a large New York-style slice. The crust was crisp and held up nicely under the toppings, which have an interesting placement scheme: instead of adding a layer of sauce and then a layer of cheese, Freilich spreads both fresh and aged mozzarella around the crust, then adds the sauce in dollops around the cheese, creating distinct boundaries between the two.

That cheese combination is great, very flavorful. The fresh mozz in particular melted perfectly in Freilich's high-heat gas oven until it was almost as flat as paper. The weak link on this pie, though was the sauce. It just wasn't my thing. Christa's either. It's very, very tangy, like a spaghetti sauce, and it totally dominates every bite in which it is present. It's pretty distracting, actually, and I found myself wishing there wasn't so much of it. The basil was good, but placed in such a small quantity that it didn't really have the ability to impart much flavor to the rest of the pizza.

Thankfully, I could almost...almost forget the sauce on the sausage half of the pie, which was much, much tastier than the plain half. The sausage was excellent (though Christa found a couple pieces to be a little gristly), seasoned perfectly, and it made me smile. If only I hadn't ordered the plain half of the pie, I'd have had an even wider smile. As it was, the pieces of delicious sausage that had the unfortunate fate of ending up in the sauce portions of the pie tasted more like meatballs in marinara than a sausage pizza.

The crust really is nothing spectacular. The outer rim is so wide and flavorless that I found myself for the first time on this trip discarding the end crusts. By the end of the evening Christa and I had a big pile of what Adam Kuban calls "pizza bones" on the tray.

(photo by Christa Engelskirch)

I really don't mean to sound too harsh with my first impressions of Emilia's, but I won't sugarcoat my experience there, either. I enjoyed the pizza--really enjoyed the sausage half--but it is a definite step down from the four other places I hit on this culinary journey. It's also a different beast than those four; whereas they all serve Neapolitan-style pies, Emilia's is much closer to the pizzas served in New York City. Even so, the sauce and crust at Emilia's doesn't come close to the best sauce and crust I had in New York (Artichoke Basille's and Di Fara, respectively).

But would I order it again? Absolutely. With lots and lots of sausage.

OVEN: Gas

RECOMMENDED: Plain Pie w/Sausage

~

So to wrap things up, here's how I'd rank the five pizzerias I tried in San Francisco:

1.) Pizzeria Delfina

2.) Pizzeria Picco

3.) Pizzaiolo

4.) Tony's Pizza Napoletana

5.) Emilia's

All offer good-to-great pies for the burgeoning SF pizza scene. Individual criticisms aside (most crusts needed more salt, Tony's charges far too much), I'd eat at any of these places on a return trip. Gladly. Well, I'd only go back to Tony's if someone else was footing the bill.

So a big Thank You to San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Larkspur, and San Carlos (where we stayed with our good friend Erik Meriwether, God Bless him). We'll be seeing you again real soon.

No, we didn't leave by way of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it makes for a more dramatic ending to everything, doesn't it?

Impressions: Tony's Pizza Napoletana

Tony's Pizza Napoletana

1570 Stockton St
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 835-9888

(all photos by Adam Lindsley unless otherwise noted)

I had fully planned to do a two-part lunch today, starting with Pizzetta 211 in the Richmond district, but those plans were dashed soundly to the floor by Google Maps, which dropped us off not in northwest San Francisco, but the northeast corner of town. As we had had a late start, a trip back across the city eliminated any possibility of trying Pizzetta 211 for lunch, so we scrapped those plans and just hit Tony's Pizza Napoletana in the North Beach district.

What's neat about Tony's is that the place boasts no less than four different ovens, each used for different types of pizza. The Margherita and Marinara pies are cooked in a domed wood-burning oven. "Classic Italian" pizzas are cooked in a gas-fired domed brick oven. "Classic American" pizzas are cooked in a New York flat-top gas-fired brick oven. Sicilian pizzas are cooked in an Italian brick oven.

One look at Tony's menu and I was hit with a severe case of sticker shock. The 12-inch Margherita sets you back a whopping $18, the highest price I've yet seen for a Marg of that size. This pizza won the 2007 World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy, and pizzaiolo Tony Gemignani makes only 73 of these a day. Well, I thought, this better be worth it. The menu makes sure you know this is "authentic" Neapolitan pizza, describing the Margherita thusly: "Dough mixed by hand using San Felice flour, then proofed in Neapolitan Wood Boxes, San Marzano tomatoes DOP, sea salt, mozzarella fior di latte, fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil from Campania."

It's kind of annoying how much they hit you over the head with this stuff as if no one else in the country makes this kind of pizza, but whatever, I figured if the pizza was good enough, they could write an entire novel on the menu and I wouldn't really care.

When the Margherita hit the table steaming hot from the wood-burning oven, it certainly had the visual of a Neapolitan pie down pat. The crust had a nice puffy cornicione and mild charring all around. Fresh from the oven, the chassis was still crisp and didn't flop when I picked up a slice (though that crispness soon faded). White islands of mozzarella floated in the bright red sea of tomato sauce and dark green leaves of fresh basil.

What I love best about Tony's Margherita is that it is properly salted. The sauce, cheese, and crust all have more salt than just about any Neapolitan-style pizza I've eaten, and I was grateful for it. The salt brought out the milky flavor of the cheese, the brightness of the tomatoes, and the rustic bread flavor in the crust. The cheese is a tad on the rubbery side, but as I said, the flavor is good enough that it doesn't really hurt the pizza as a whole.

Unfortunately, it is in no way an $18 pie. I don't know what reasoning Tony has for charging so much for it. Is it the ingredients? The location of the restaurant? Whatever it is, it's just too much to charge for this kind of pie. If it really is because Tony insists on importing all these Italian ingredients, well, the fact is I've had pies that are just as good (and better) made with cheaper domestic products.

The second pie of the afternoon was the Truffle pie (market price today: $28). Normally this white pie is topped with mozzarella, burrata, Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam Triple Cream cheese, wild mushrooms, arugula, parmigiano, and Italian shaved truffles. Today, though, they were out of truffles (more would arrive in 3 weeks, we were told), and so they would be substituting them with truffle oil. We accepted that because Christa and I were both excited to see the Mt. Tam cheese on the pizza, and could not pass up an opportunity to try it.

(Mt. Tam cheese - Photo: cowgirlcreamery.com)

The finished product fell far short of our expectations. Don't misunderstand me: it was good, but it lacked certain elements that made it irresistible during the ordering process. The Mt. Tam cheese, which is so beautifully creamy, became completely lost in the other ingredients, and we could neither taste it nor detect any creamy presence amidst the mozz, parmigiano, or burrata. There's a great cheesiness to the pie, but in the end I'm sad to say the addition of the Mt. Tam only served to jack up the price of the pie. The wild mushrooms weren't rubbery at all, but they also didn't impart much flavor to the pizza. The truffle oil certainly brought a light truffle flavor to every slice, but it was hardly a replacement for the real thing. $28 is asking too much for this pizza, especially since there are no real truffles to be found on it. Considering that almost all truffle oil is synthetic, I really don't know where the majority of our money went.

Is the pizza at Tony's good? Yeah, you bet. It's great, actually. But for the outrageous prices they're charging, I'm finding the idea of recommending it hard to swallow.

Tonight: Emilia's.

OVENS: Wood & Gas

RECOMMENDED: Margherita