Los Angeles : Pizzeria Mozza [Pics]

If you follow the American pizza scene with any interest, you know that THE pizzeria of the moment is Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles, CA. Pizzeria Mozza is the brainchild of LA's most esteemed baker, Nancy Silverton, and New York's Italian bad boy, Mario Batali, and was recently declared America's Best Pizzeria by the New York Times contributor and famed pizza writer/blogger, Ed Levine. So given, PIGMON and I dutifully paid a visit to Pizzeria Mozza last Thursday night:










fennel sausage, red onion, and fennel pollen pizza


littleneck clam, oregano, parmigiano reggiano, and pecorino cheese pizza



Deciding on which pizzas to order was somewhat difficult, but we received some assistance from Nancy Silverton herself, who strongly recommended the fennel sausage, red onion, and fennel pollen pie.

The verdict? Well, I dunno what to say, really. I mean, I liked it an awful lot, but I only tried two pizzas, and neither one entailed tomato sauce or mozzarella, ingredients often deemed indispensible by the pizza cognoscenti. In any case, Nancy Silverton has come up with one hell of a pizza crust: it's airy, chewy, light, and crunchy, all at once, and it has an exceptional, yeasty and robust flavour. Oh, and despite whatever those idiots at Chowhound will tell you, the pizza at Pizzeria Mozza is most assuredly pizza!

Ed Levine's Mozza Video Clip [SliceNY]

Mozza's Pizza is NOT Pizza! [Chowhound]

The Greatest Pizza in the World Is in Los Angeles (Maybe) [Ed Levine @ Serious Eats]

Hot spot? Mozza is on fire [S. Irene Virbila @ LATimes.com (Registration Required)]

Believe The Hype [Jonathan Gold @ LA Weekly]

Pizzeria Mozza [Official Site]
641 N. Highland Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90038
323.297.0101

E.M.

How expensive is a meal at Mozza before the wine? It looks like a pizza serves 1 person, correct? Thanks for the info.

2Utah2 wrote:How expensive is a meal at Mozza before the wine? It looks like a pizza serves 1 person, correct? Thanks for the info.

The prices seemed very much in line with Chicago's Spacca Napoli.

We ordered two appetizers and two pizzas, and I believe that the bill was somewhere around $50.

We started off with two glasses of prosecco, but I cleared them separately at the bar.

E.M.

E.:

Thanks for that report and the pics. I find all the hyperbole from famous people not a particular point of attraction (though it is interesting to note) but from your comments and pics, I would definitely like to try this place when next in LA... but only after having a burger or two...



Antonius

After reading the huge accolades that Pizzeria Mozza has been getting from various sources, it would be a lie to say that my expectations were anything short of very high.
I tried not to let all the gawking eyes that fixated on us as we walked through the front door deter me from continuing my pizza pursuit (and were just as quickly diverted since neither one of us were celebs). This was the one and only place I was willing to endure such scrutiny in L.A since I was quite interested in seeing what type of pie a master bread maker (Nancy Silverton), teamed up with a celebrity Italian chef (Mario Batali) could create.
I have always heard and agreed that a great pizza is largely determined by the greatness of its bread. In fact, I cannot think of a single example anywhere where great bread didn’t yield great pizza (in any form, with any topping).
That was until I tried Pizzeria Mozza. No doubt; Mozza makes some of the finest pizza crust anywhere. As Erik says above, the pizza crust is “airy, chewy, light, and crunchy, all at once”. The trouble with these pies, however, lies not in the bread itself but the toppings and in its relationship to that wonderful crust. Although Mozza uses extremely high quality ingredients straight across the board (such as wonderful Parmigiano Reggiano, stellar fennel sausage, little neck clams, and fresh rosemary), I found the ratio of these toppings to be out of proportion to each other.
In the clam pizza, for example, overuse of dried rosemary overwhelmed the subtlety of the wonderful fresh clams and an overuse of Parmigiano Reggiano overwhelmed everything.
In our fennel sausage pizza, tasty but awkward golfball-sized pieces of sausage were completely unmanageable. I basically had to eat them separately from the pizza.

More importantly, the toppings seemed to be completely independent of the wonderful bread instead of harmoniously working with it, like any great pizza, no matter what the style. The trouble with these pies lies with their construction and its balance and has nothing to do with the ingredients they chose to use.

Don’t get me wrong. These were very nice examples of pizza. But there is little doubt that one walks away from such an experience with an even greater respect for those rare, seasoned pizza makers (the true artisans) across the country that have spent years perfecting what they would deem the perfect pie (C. Bianco – Bianco’s, D. Dimarco - Difara’s, A. Waters - Chez Panisse, A. Mangieri - Una Pizza Napoletana, and Ciminieri - Totonno’s, as examples).

I couldn’t help thinking as I left that Silverton was getting the short end of the stick in this newly formed partnership.
What I’d really like to know is where Silverton/Batali’s pizzas will be after a few more years and several more trials?

Until then, I’ll just have to anxiously await a better pizza and avoid all those glaring eyes.

PIGMON wrote:I tried not to let all the gawking eyes that fixated on us as we walked through the front door deter me from continuing my pizza pursuit (and were just as quickly diverted since neither one of us were celebs).

Speak for yourself, son.

I got a number of glances of the same exact sort I so often used to take home with me.

E.M.

FYI-

For any of those planning trips to LA, they're running about 1 month in advance for reservations. I'm going to try to squeeze in there sometime this weekend anyway.

I went to Pizza Mozza on Friday in an attempt to get in sans reservations. Those serfs without reservations are relegated to bar seating only, fine with me as I prefer that to a table, but a little awkward if you have 4 people in your party, like we did. After waiting about 30 minutes, we were seated.

The first thing I noticed about the menu was that the antipasti selection looked spectacular. We ordered the speck with fave and parmeggiano-reggiano, arancine, another order of speck and cauliflower gratinate. The speck was like butter - delicious, and the fave were roasted in their pods. The cauliflower gratinate was, well, cauliflower, but very tasty. The real standout were the arancine. Tiny little things, but they were slightly crunchy on the outside and meltingly tender on the inside. After biting into half of one, I could see the beautiful telephone-wire stringiness that makes these so fun to eat. I had previously written about the arancine at Osteria di Tramonto, but Mozza's beat those quite handily. My complaint is that at $12 per plate of speck, fave and parmeggiano-reggiano, there was alarmingly too little speck (two slices!) and too much fave. Also, I'd like pieces of parmaggiano separately intermixed in the dish, not grated over the top.

The pizzas. As described above, they were excellent. The crust was the highlight and really showed off Nancy Silverton's talents. Definitely bready and bubbly at the top end, but thin enough in the center to be worthy of Neapolitan-style. I had the margarita (my standard), which was fabulous.

If you're going to LA, get thee to Mozza, but not without calling for reservations first!