Two New Eastside LA Restaurants
How I didn’t know this by intuition and sense of smell the day it opened is beyond me, but even though they have a still-under-construction website, Pizzeria Mozza is most definitely open for business. Amy & I went last night and were enthusing from the second we walked into the door through the rest of the meal.
Amazingly, the tables were all booked at 5pm, but we were able to get a prime seat at the pizza bar without difficulty - and were treated to a ringside view of Nancy Silverton presiding over a very impressive wood-fired brick oven and pizza station, watching her pull gurgling, smoking pizzas out one after another, only to layer on beautiful ingredients like prosciutto, burrata, fennel, high-end pepperoni & sausage, and grated pecorino, all the while managing her team with the kind of demanding perfectionism you don’t see often enough in LA. The front-of-house service was just as on point and the main attraction, the pizza itself, was gorgeous: a perfectly crisp bottom crust, with edges carbonized on the outside and yeasty on the inside, and just the right amount of savoryness. I won’t even bother to tell you what we had; since we were basically in the kitchen, I can promise you it’s all that good. I can’t believe I’m saying things this superlative about a pizza outside of NYC, but perhaps we’ve debunked a myth as well: it’s obviouly not the water.
We’ll certainly be going back to eat our way around that menu and drink around the selective wine list. As Amy put it, “We finally found a craveable restaurant!”
This morning we were inspired after repeated urges from a friend, to check out a spot called Square One, an unpretentious cafe on an unpretentious street tucked between the Scientology Center and the hospital, between Los Feliz and Koreatown. We were moved to ask again, how did we not know about this sooner? Given that this one’s been open the better part of a year, shame on us! As at Mozza, every option on the menu looked as good as the next, from the fresh-ingredient benedicts (as reviewed by EatingLA here) to the baked-egg skillets to the ox-tail and shortrip hashes. We had an artisanal bacon-and-egg sandwich on beautifully flaky and buttery homemade brioche bread, along with a really interesting lemon-thyme chicken sausage and roast tomato omelet. Even the coffee was perfect: a strong brew of a mildly nutty varietal from (I think) somewhere in Central America.
Once again Amy nailed it by saying “All weekends should be like this!”
December 31st, 2006 20:43
Will definitely check out the pizza joint. I crave good NYC pizza. Happy New Year! Cheers!