Find your preferred style of pie within L.A.’s abundant pizza scene that borrows influence from New York, Detroit, Naples and local farmers.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Welcome to L.A.’s golden era of pizza: Try 21 of the best slices at these pizzerias
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Los Angeles is having a golden pizza moment.
As local appetite and talent surged for the globally loved dish over the last decade, it’s now possible to find nearly every regional American variation of pizza in our city: the wide, pliant triangles that define the New York slice; individualist takes on the Neapolitan archetypes; Chicago deep dish; the Detroit-style medium-thick pan pizzas laced with edges of caramelized cheese; crackery bar or tavern pies that show up across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic; and even the recent appearance, at Ozzy’s in Glendale, of a New Haven tomato pie.
If in one sense we’re a clearinghouse of styles, L.A. is also the perfect place for chefs to approach pizza as both personal narrative and personal expression. No brittle rules obstruct creativity. Tradition, innovation and nostalgia bake together into beautifully mottled canvases.
New, compelling pizza restaurants open with amazing frequency these days. For this guide to 21 favorites I’ve included a couple of places that launched early in 2023 and quickly established their baseline excellence. Most have been around for at least a few years, including several darlings of the scene that began as pandemic-era startups and found lasting audiences. Collectively, the range of delicious possibilities gleaned from the template of crust, sauce and cheese is astounding.
Showing Places
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Apollonia's Pizzeria
Mid-Wilshire Pizza $$
When the fashion in national pizza circles last decade turned to the rectangular Detroit-style pie, Los Angeles native Justin De Leon crafted a version he debuted in 2018 that ignited local interest. His lacy, heat-blasted cheese borders sometimes stand so tall the pattern resembles rows of spires, and the plush interior is also pummeled with layers of rich ingredients. This is crucial, though: De Leon keeps the square pies as an off-menu item, so check Apollonia’s Instagram account for availability. And don’t overlook the primary goodness of his thin round pies, conceived with combinations like “the Dirty Agent,” a white pie with slivers of red onion and Roma tomato and blotches of duck-bacon sauces. All respect that “splash of pesto” is an optional topping.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Blackbird Pizza Shop
Fairfax Pizza $$
I know people who despise Chicago-style deep dish and wish to reject its excesses from the pizza canon. I do not align with those souls. Los Angeles deep-dish specialists number few. My preferred among them is the Melrose Avenue hangout opened by Luis Ulloa in 2017. He fashions a tall biscuity crust — crunchy with cornmeal, a controversial addition in the deep-dish canon — that holds a moat of molten cheese and a top soil of chunky tomato sauce. I most love the signature version made with meatball that, per the deep-dish lexicon, is really more of a flattened disc than a ball. It makes sense as you saw off bites with knife and fork. Ulloa also makes thin-crust pies with suggested combinations such as bacon, asparagus and goat cheese or speck, pineapple and piquillo peppers that vie valiantly for your attention. Mostly I’m here for deep dish, with a draft farmhouse ale from Lost Abbey alongside to temper the glorious overabundance.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Brandoni Pepperoni
Culver City Pizza $$
Brandon Gray, whose resume includes Providence and Trois Mec, began his pizza pop-up in the summer of 2020 and has been holding near-weekly events in various locations ever since. Currently he and his team steadily appear on Thursdays and Fridays in the back of Bar & Garden wine shop in Culver City. They stretch dough to crackery thinness; the most compelling pies become collages of farmers market bounty. One recent and excellent example: Steady Mobbin, painted with arugula pesto and dotted with corn kernels, dollops of lemon ricotta, roasted zucchini and a few artful squash blossoms. Gray is almost masterful with fruit crostatas; I took home one with a buckwheat crust filled with farmers cheese custard overlaid with nectarines, and I wondered if he might consider opening a combination pizzeria and bakery.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Dtown Pizzeria
Canoga Park Pizza $$
Ryan Ososky makes the closest faithful rendition of the puffed, rectangular, cheese-fringed Detroit pizza that I’ve found in Los Angeles. For his most traditional take, he blankets dough, spread over a blue steel pan, with a highly meltable mix that includes nutty-sweet brick cheese from Wisconsin, his home state. Then he adds two red stripes — sometimes called racing stripes in honor of Motor City — down the center. It resembles a sideways Rothko. Snack on the caramelized edges, which snap off in satisfying shards, before moving on to the airy center. Ososky also dabbles in some outré variations, and though I respect the desire to stay creatively sharp with imaginings like a brunch pizza with bacon jam and eggs, I stick to the basics. Ososky previously operated out of West Hollywood but recently settled in as one of the cornerstones of Topanga Social, the ambitious food hall in Canoga Park’s Westfield Topanga shopping center.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Friends & Family Pizza Co.
Fairfax Pizza $$
Given the pleasure I take in the croissants, hand pies and other morning treats conceived by pastry chef Roxana Jullapat at her East Hollywood institution Friends & Family, easily one of L.A.’s top five bakeries, a foray into pizza seems logical. She and her partner, chef Daniel Mattern, recruited pizzaiolo Tony Hernandez to shepherd their new project at the Original Farmers Market, where pies cut into slices tempt from behind the glass along the counter. They reheat fast to an even, glistening crispness; I’m especially fond of the pizza paved with a rapini-sausage pairing and the funk of Taleggio balanced with potato.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Ghisallo
Santa Monica Pizza $$
Executive chef David Rodriguez and his team tackle two styles of pizza: thin, chewy, Neapolitan-style hybrids baked whole to order and wide, crisper New York-inspired slices on display behind glass. Rodriguez worked alongside Daniele Uditi at the original Brentwood location of Pizzana, an influence that’s easy to trace at Ghisallo in variations such as the take on cacio e pepe with garlic confit and ricotta. The restaurant has a backyard oasis of a patio, with plenty of tree shade and piles of blankets for cool evenings. I’m as happy sticking around for a Campesino, a ricotta and prosciutto pie with a base of Parmesan cream and fig paste, as I am asking for a couple of pepperoni pizza slices to go and heading down to Santa Monica’s Ocean View Park less than two miles away.
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(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Hail Mary Pizza
Atwater Village Pizza $$
One of my favorite places to land for a calm Monday night dinner is a booth in the back of the Atwater Village pizzeria founded by David Wilcox, who sold the restaurant last year. The atmosphere is as earthy as the pies, built from dough fortified with whole wheat flour. Ripping off hunks of crust straight from the oven has a nourishing effect akin to gobbling hot bread on a cold morning. Scan the wall-size blackboard for the latest creations. The pizzaiolos have a particular knack for sweet and spicy mishmashes, exemplified in a recent special of brown butter-braised pineapple matched with honey ham, pickled jalapenos and honey. The Beatrix, a seemingly simple trinity of tomato sauce, mozzarella and Parmesan, sets the bar for cheese pizzas in Los Angeles.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
La Morra Pizzeria
Valley Glen Pizza $$
I can’t think of any other Los Angeles pizza operators whose business strategies evolve more than those of Zach Swemle and Marlee Blodgett. They cater, they partner with restaurants and wine bars and coffee shops for pop-ups across the metro regions, they veer in and out of permanent locations. Their puffed, skillfully charred, Neapolitan-adjacent pies are worth the chase. Most reliably they currently run a pickup and delivery location from a Valley Glen kitchen facility. I’m there when the order is ready, standing by for a car picnic. Swemle and Blodgett make a stand-up vegan Margherita (using Violife products), and I’m forever a fan of their raclette and roasted garlic pizza tiled with sliced Yukon golds and fragrant with rosemary.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
La Sorted’s Pizza
Silver Lake Pizza $$
Look for the Dodger-blue sign in the Silver Lake strip mall where Tommy Brockert set up shop after starting his pizzeria as a pop-up in 2020. Naturally leavened dough enriched with freshly milled grains gives his broad-fringed pies a pleasing sourdough tang. Try the Ina, one of Brockert’s newest handiworks, varnished with spicy vodka sauce and covered with provolone, mozzarella, pecorino and fresh basil. I’m also lobbying for his Upside-Down Mamba pizza, its base layer of cheese lacy and crisp in the manner of a quesotaco, to become a permanent by-the-slice option. The storefront mostly operates as a takeout and delivery business, but there are a couple of sidewalk tables for those of us who want to feast immediately.
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(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Little Coyote
Long Beach Pizza $$
With their two Long Beach locations, Jonathan Strader and Jack Leahy summon the spirit of East Coast pizza parlors. Their standard round pies have wide, bubbled perimeters, with crusts that crunch and droop in ways that are ideal for folding slices as you eat them. Ingredient combinations lean zaniest with their frequent specials — as in a recent homage to loaded nachos — but the fundamental options succeed in their straightforwardness. Here I want a pepperoni pie or a veggie supreme. If we’re getting technical with American pizza vernacular, I’d say Little Coyote’s version of grandma pie slices are arguably billowier than the thin, square Long Island originals. It’s more of a Sicilian slice to me, and I enjoy it no matter the labeling. Among bottles of wine, the Matthiasson “Tendu” Red Blend has an herbal acidic brightness that tastes designed to pair with pizza.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Ozzy's Apizza
Glendale Pizza $$
As the name suggests, New Haven natives Chris Wallace and Craig Taylor founded their business with the mission to bring their hometown style of pizza — pronounced “abeetz” — to Los Angeles. I’m a fan of New Haven pizza, with its flat, smoky-charred pies hard-baked more to crunch than crispness. Wallace’s pizzas, fired and served on the covered patio of the Glen Arden Club in Glendale, remind me most of the pies made at a New Haven pizzeria called Bar, a relative newcomer that opened in the city in 1996. Ozzy’s menu leans meaty and cheesy, but to understand the genre I’d point you enthusiastically to the Liotta, Wallace’s take on a classic tomato pie. It has the right acidic pounce to the sauce, with an insinuation of creaminess from a healthy glug of olive oil. I will pay extra for pecorino to sprinkle over top, which is fairly traditional and pleasantly ups the saltiness. I will also wait patiently for Wallace to undertake New Haven’s most famous pizza export, the fresh clam pie.
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(Wesley Lapointe / Los Angeles Times)
Pijja Palace
Silver Lake Indian Pizza $$
Owner Avish Naran crisscrosses influences with a we-do-what-we-want irreverence that feels innate to the city, and there is nothing else quite like his Silver Lake sensation in Los Angeles. Naran and executive chef Miles Shorey do their best to eschew labels, but I’d couch the essence of their pizzas in the vein of East Coast-style bar or tavern pizzas — thin, chewy-crisp crusts with plenty of sauce and cheese all the way to the blackened edges. Don’t go too crazy with the build-your-own combinations: A relatively mild vindaloo sauce topped with chicken tikka and tandoori onions is plenty. Or let the restaurant drive with one of its creations, including a trio of green tomato tikka masala, turkey kofta with a texture akin to sausage, and raw onions.
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(Andrea D’Agosto / For The Times)
Pizzana
Brentwood Pizza $$
I include Pizzana because the influence of its chef, Daniele Uditi, can’t be overstated in our booming pizza culture. Uditi’s story became part of local lore: He comes from a family of bakers in Caserta, Italy, just 20 miles north of Naples. In California, his pies — tangy from the dough’s two-day fermentation, speckled and lightly puffed along its fringes — toggle between tradition and artistic license. His neo-Margherita steers away from the soupy center of many classic Neapolitan pizzas, and his cacio e pepe has become part of the L.A. canon, deservedly. At this point Pizzana, which began in 2017 in a partnership by Sprinkles Cupcakes founder Candace Nelson and her husband, Charles, and actor Chris O’Donnell, has five locations, including an outpost in Dallas. The specialness of the pie can’t possibly be replicated in so many places. That’s no fault of Uditi; I’d love to see him have a small restaurant of his own. In the meantime, the original Pizzana in Brentwood is where I’ve found the pizzas that most closely resemble their initial greatness.
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(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Pizzeria Bianco
Downtown L.A. Pizza $$
It felt like an apex to the local pizza boom when Chris Bianco, the country’s most revered pizzaiolo, opened his long-in-coming location in Row DTLA in June 2022. This is Bianco’s first pizzeria outside Arizona since he co-founded the business in 1994. The menu stays true to his perfected creations, specifically the Wise Guy (featuring fennel sausage and smoked mozzarella) and the Rosa (slivered red onion, Parmesan, rosemary, crushed pistachios). Head chef Marco Angeles ably translates Bianco’s genius at the pizza ovens, and the man himself spends much of his workweek in town. In early summer, sibling venture Pane Bianco launched for lunch across the complex. Among sandwich and salad options, the menu includes by-the-slice pizza options: Zero in on the one slicked with spinach cream sauce and finished with buttery-sharp caciocavallo.
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(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Pizzeria Mozza
Hancock Park Pizza $$
Nancy Silverton’s tomato pie covered in splayed squash blossoms with slowly melting blobs of burrata codified a discernible style of Southern California pizza when it debuted in 2006: It was a thing of beauty that graced magazine covers pre-Instagram and registers as decadent and somehow also healthful. These days the menu lists plenty of other worthy dishes, pies and otherwise, but for anyone who wants to understand modern Los Angeles pizza culture, and the role Silverton has played in shaping it, the oft-imitated squash blossom-burrata game-changer is still important to savor. As in all of her restaurants, roll with the seasons: A recent summertime inspiration arrived topped with corn kernels, beech mushrooms and Fresno chiles packing enough heat to offset a stretchy duo of mozzarella and fontina.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Pizzeria Sei
Pico-Robertson Pizza $$
From a seat at the counter in a small Pico-Robertson dining room, notice how William Joo and his cooks crimp the edges on his neo-Neapolitan pizzas. When pulled from the black-tiled oven fueled by almond wood, the crusts will have flared into singed starburst patterns — an homage to a geometry popularized by Tokyo pizzaiolo Tsubasa Tamaki. In every other way, Joo is a craftsperson forging his own style. He looks to the Neapolitan canon but avoids the soupy centers; his pies slide from the paddle to the plate bubbling in the center. Start with a Margherita to appreciate the calibrated sweetness of the tomato sauce, the pleasing ratio of fior di latte, the head-clearing basil leaves and the amplifying sprinkle of sea salt. The Bismarck, with its egg in the center bleeding yolk over the surrounding slices of prosciutto cotto, is the only pizza in Los Angeles I’ll order that includes truffle oil; I usually loathe the stuff, but its usage here is as understated as a pheromone. Note that Sei, whom Joo runs with Jennifer So, changed its hours of operation recently and now only opens for lunch on weekends.
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(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
Quarter Sheets
Echo Park Pizza $$
Three things one can expect at Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin’s tiny, mighty Echo Park sensation: pizza, cake, crowds. Lindell’s pies lean toward the style of Detroit, his hometown. The lacy, cheesy borders of his thick-crust creations approach blackened without ever tasting burnt. Whole or by the slice, count on elemental versions with red sauce and mozzarella and a pepperoni option, and another crowned with a far wilder whirl of ingredients that changes every couple of weeks or so. Oh, but wait: Lately the kitchen has been experimenting with round, thin, charry-edged tavern pies that are also wonderful. Who knows how long they may stick around. Meanwhile, Ziskin and her baking team dream up lush cakes layered with fruits and custards and creams that flow with the seasons. A lot of customers opt for takeout; the dining room can accommodate a couple-dozen guests at a time and looks like an early-’80s rec room, complete with both record and cassette players. The eat-in menu includes salads and other ever-evolving surprises. All in all, no one can guess what L.A.’s first couple of carbs will devise next, but I want to show up every week and find out.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Ronan
Fairfax Pizza $$
In the last decade “pizza and small plates” has emerged across the United States as a persuasive restaurant genre, with menus promising both comforts and creative gambles, and Daniel Cutler is one of its best L.A. practitioners. Kingfish crudo paired with melon or the season’s Jimmy Nardellos spiked with salsa verde lay strong groundwork for the main-event pies. Thick, airy, handsomely pocked brims define Cutler’s pizzas. They create saucy wells for tomato-based classics and new standards such as “How ’Nduja Want It?” that balances soft, smeary sausage with Gorgonzola and fermented celery. Loving calzones is a lonely passion of mine; Ronan meets my desires with its “Ode to Philippe” that reconstructs the flavors of a French dip, during its new and recommended brunch service, with a calzone that channels all the eggy, cheesy goodness of a breakfast burrito.
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(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Secret Pizza
Montecito Heights Pizza $$
When New Jersey transplant Sean Lango set up business from his apartment via Instagram in September 2020, he found an audience eager for what he broadly labeled “East Coast-style pizza” — thin, 18-inch pies with pliant crusts, over which tomato sauce and a blend of mozzarella and pecorino were baked into beautiful, speckled circles. Last summer, Secret Pizza moved into a small space in Montecito Heights. Customers continue to book time slots for pickups three days a week through Instagram links, though the pizzeria’s model is slowly shifting: Sometimes Lango has slices for walk-up available on weekends, and he’s been sliding Sicilian-style squares into his mix. I often order a Sicilian slice on the fly but am here chiefly for his superb thinner pies, likely requested half pepperoni and half fresh mushroom, or maybe half with extra cheese. No pizza steaming in the box for me: I plonk down on patio space in front of Lango’s glassed-in kitchen as soon as the prize is in hand. Plenty of other people have the same idea.
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Slice House by Tony Gemignani
Thousand Oaks Pizza $$
Thousand Oaks marks the first Southern California location for the growing franchise of restaurants that name-checks San Francisco pizzaiolo and multiple World Pizza Championships winner Tony Gemignani. The maximalist menu strives to master many styles, including New York-style thin and the varied thicknesses of grandma, Detroit and Sicilian schools of pizza. Some creations have so many ingredients the descriptions will make your eyes glaze over. Having tried every style, I most recommend the thin-crust pizzas. They’re enjoyable in both the form of a wide, crackly, gratifying slice and also whole pies in semi-restrained combinations like the “Little Italy,” crowned with pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, red onion and roasted peppers.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Side Pie
Altadena Pizza $$
The first time I tried Kevin Hockin’s beautifully pocked and asymmetrical pizzas in mid-2021, they were slipped through a makeshift window carved in the fence surrounding his Altadena home. He and his crew have since moved into more quasi-permanent surroundings: Phone in your order for a specific time slot, purchase canned craft brews or bottles of orange wine at the Side Pie storefront at 900 E. Altadena Drive, and walk around back to the restaurant’s outdoor dining space. Settle at a colorful table under string lights, and the staff will bring your pizzas when they’re ready. I’d consider Hockin’s style deeply Californian: crust with a wheaty, flatbread-esque tang and toppings that lean to seasonal vegetables and fruits and herbs. Try Kevin Lyman’s Pie, a garlicky white pizza fragrant with fresh thyme and extra-wonderful with an addition of sausage, or a seasonal gem spread with ricotta and strewn with sliced peaches in the summertime.
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