The Pizza Show: Los Angeles

Do we have some champagne here? Do we have a Magnum? What mintage is 2006 2006? Okay, I think that's good maintenance, it sounds good to me, you know how we know, so you take the glass like mine and say very complex and everyone is going to think. You are the greatest wine connoisseur in the world. Elly's food scene is red hot and the

pizza

s are no different. There are all kinds of

pizza

s coming out of Los Angeles. Now I'm going to try a little of everything I'm used to. NY. Pizza culture, where there's a slice on every block in Los Angeles, is a little more subtle—you have to look for it first.

I'm meeting Chrissy mm, night market boom, he knows all about the food. I'm, let's go visit your favorite pizza place soda where we are now it's a strange neighborhood to describe it's right on the border of Beverly Hills in West Los Angeles it's like no man's land but it's like an oasis, you know, it's a place I've been coming to for a long time being from L.A. and being an L.A. guy, what does a California pizza mean to you? It's me, California pizzas, a lot of things, I mean, being not from LA or not from California, we like things our own way, you know?

You can see so many examples that you know, you can see like the classic Wolfgang disco, like the salmon pizza or like one of my favorite things, like in the 80s, the duck pecking pizza at California Pizza Kitchen, like there and then You know what I mean, people. like Alice Waters, right, and like Wolfgang Puck, the day always embraced the produce and all the amazing things that California had to offer and then it almost seemed like well, why don't we take that stuff and put it on a pizza? I think that's a big part of it, if you think of a pizza as something you could put other things on, it's like we're in the perfect place to do that.

Why is this your favorite pizza place in Los Angeles? I know the food scene but I'm also kind of a creature of habit like this quickly became my favorite place we opened Soto almost six years ago we tried to make it as traditional as possible Neapolitan style Margareta with anchovies this is my favorite right here we love that with a little olive oil and that's all amazing here we go this is what we were waiting for Bob so what do we have for you this is the spicy Joe this is the anchovy margarita and then this is the typo these are the classics here No I can wait to try it it smells so Well mmm back in the 90's my grandma who is the original chef at my family's restaurant hooked up with Wolfgang Puck and they made Thai pizzas at the time he had a restaurant in Malibu that It's since closed, but he usually always comes to the restaurant in the past and said, hey, why don't we get something like something Thai?

It's the most outrageous thing, but I like it, it's something that's super L.A. to me, you know, people bringing different cultures together and then making this food, what does it do? You think of it as a guy like Wolfgang Puck putting a pizza on the menu. You know it's pretty crazy. Wolfgang Puck is the pinnacle of cool to me. He was somehow doing his thing and was way ahead of the game. Hey oh. He's delicious, he's delicious, how's it going, Steve? It's good to see you, that's my choice, but this is like the late night hit, sitting and eating beets and drinking beer, I love it, it's my favorite experience, where Fargo is right now, Beverly Hills thanks to a Michelin star. restaurant, has been a staple in Los Angeles forever.

Well, I ordered a coffee and the maitre d' was sweet enough to not only bring me a regular coffee, but they also put it on this big tray with these, you know, all of them. accessories to go with some sugar cream, oh wow, and even some extra coffee, so you can tell the way they do things here is really special. I'm actually really nervous about meeting Wolfgang Puck. I mean, this is Wolfgang Puck, if that's what it is. great thing and even the coffee is courteous our love hello chef how are you young man? It's a pleasure to meet you thank you much better my tattoos I think I'll have to see them I mean you come into this maybe I'm too young.

I'm so excited to hear the story of the classic smoked salmon pizza. She had as much hair as you when I invented her. You know this is the original location. This is actually the second location we have. We begin. on Sunset Boulevard in January 1982 and you know I used to have to smoke someone on the menu because I bought a smoker, you couldn't find a good smoke for someone in Los Angeles, it's a Spargo that I open and end up in the pizza oven because I don't we could. We won't get a good pizza either so we have the dough here and we always say it has to feel like a baby's butt.

I don't know if you already had children, you don't have children yet, for me the crust has to be thin and then spread with oil no, I had never put it on the menu at first we were so busy that people waited an hour even if you had a reservation at 8 o'clock, if you can see that at 9:00 you were lucky. I remember feeding Lionel Richie and Jimmy Connors and I'll take anything. I didn't have a place for them to sit, so I told Jimmy why doesn't he sit on the step and eat the pizza. The children were sitting on the step.

He eats pizza likes to cook. and you know, if you didn't know the restaurant, you didn't know about the pizza pie, they say they're working on making us a smoked salmon pizza and you know it was like the secret song became way more popular than ever. now we're going to sprinkle some onion on top put it on your right and then something is burning the floor pretty hot you can see it even in a minute look at that so it's nice to have this nice bubble here's our smoked salmon a important part. The part is you're going to have to cut it, really tilt it, it smells delicious, that's not it, look at the pizza there, keep an eye out here, today you're the sous chef or they're serving.

I think we are doing very well, what do you say? beautiful, it's right on that plate, perfectly, the pizza was so refreshed, the lips a little with olive oil, yes, I have a mixture of fresh cream, sour cream, dill, shallots, lemon juice and a little pepper, We want the cream, the cream is delicious with the bread and everything. all we have to cover is with smoked salmon and just lay them out and let a little bit of the edge

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, yeah, come up a little bit, okay, some chives are always good and then we put each piece with a little caviar, well, I think find someone with champagne and we can eat what you're saying sounds good to me pizza and wine thank you thank you I could eat it every day really amazing this is so good well you can attract so many people in Brooklyn it was like always, we played with the rules, you know, when it came to margherita pizzas and Sicilian pizzas, but you know it was easier to do something different on the west coast, why?

Because on the east coast you had this tradition of everyone. these old Italian families that came from Calabria, from Sicily, from Naples, if you had given them a pizza like that, they would have thrown it away after you forgot about it, so the people who are newer because we didn't have this history, from chefs to restaurant tours, Wolfgang. Puck has inspired many people in the farm industry, including these two men here: Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield. In the 1980s, these former federal prosecutors quit their jobs and decided to open a pizzeria. California Pizza Kitchen. You could thank these men for popularizing chicken. pizza, well we're sitting in our new restaurant, bottled fish in Brentwood, on the west side of Los Angeles, but looking directly at our sixth restaurant, right across the street is CPK, California Pizza Kitchen, which you guys started, that's right, what it was like California, what Beverly Hills was like.

Back then we opened our first restaurant that's still there on South Beverly Drive in a restaurant that failed, I think three or four times, so it was one of those damn places, the last one was called Zen, you know, we always talk big, in other words. We didn't think about having just one restaurant and that would be it, this would be the beginning of a trust, a restaurant chain, California style pizza was really in its infancy, although it wasn't even a style, was it okay there? was and was created by Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, there's no doubt that she is the mother and the idea of ​​individual style pizza, and then a Wolfgang Puck brought it to Spago and then we decided that we would bring that to the masses and we wrote that we were going to create the third style of pizza, that there was New York pizza, that there was cago pizza and that we were here to create the third style of California pizza when it comes to California Pizza Kitchen. barbecue chicken, that's it guys, no, there is no doubt, it is truly original, we have to admit that we did not create it, it was the barbecue chicken that even opened our minds, so we had this concept of what what we wanted on the pizza, but when we opened the first restaurant a lot of our pizzas were punk style pizzas, there was duck sausage, there was rabbit sauce, we actually had Cavett sauce, so we brought in what happened: the original Spandau pizza chef He was our consultant, he created this brilliant menu. but it had barbecue chicken legs barbecue chicken pizza it's been my moment we sold the company five years ago thirty years of history it was number one in every restaurant every day around the world that was our always our theorem everything what we work well with bread would work well on a pizza the last time I had barbecue chicken pizza was at CPK in 1999 at the Sympathy Even More Long Island.

I have a visitor. I met with Brian Sullivan, CPK's head of culinary innovation, so what would you say? the prototype of classic California pizza. I think it starts with the thin crust and tocks and really fresh ingredients using the crust this gives a canvas that just pushes them out so this is the pizza that started it all here that's it yeah that's right. the original of the iconic barbecue chicken pizza that was created in 1985 at California Pizza Kitchen, so we're going to make the barbecue chicken pizza, we're going to start with our barbecue sauce, this is our original barbecue sauce, the next ingredient It's smoked gouda cheese.

We just put a little bit of that in there and this is mozzarella cheese. The next ingredient is our barbecue chicken with this pizza on the original menu, so it hasn't changed since then and it hasn't changed since it's exactly this. recipe from day one, then we're going to top it with fresh red onions, so that's it, that's as simple as it can be and we're going to put it in the oven. I'm going to paste it right here and place it right in the center of this. What is the strangest rhythm? So I ended up on the menu.

Yes, I would have to say a pizza with egg salad. The hot egg salad. We also made a sushi pizza. It's not a good idea. Wow, you guys went there and we did it. Yes, I don't think so. It lasts more than two weeks and was absolutely fine. I think it's already incredible. It smells so good. I feel like I'm back in the mall when I was a kid. I like to take you back and then we finish with a little bit of barbecue sauce I think it accentuates the flavor a little bit and then the last ingredient is fresh cilantro.

Great, cheers, man, it looks like it's all ready, hmm, remember, it's sweet, it's a little salty, right? But the bread is nice and light, you know? It's definitely a California style pizza, you know what I mean, why do you think this pizza was so successful? I think they're just flavors that people can relate to, it's like this perfect marriage, yeah, I think maybe a lot of people could have done it. Rejected at first, but even in my neighborhood, you walk to our neighborhood slice pizza place. Chances are there will be a slice of barbecue chicken in there.

You know, I think it's definitely a testament to what you guys have done in the pizza industry, that's nice. great and if New Yorkers can accept the Nets taking away their right, it's a big plane. I think it's a big wing, as is the Los Angeles food scene as a whole. There's a diverse pizza culture here that extends beyond California style. I mean, you could. even get a slice of New York here now, so what's Fairfax vs pine pizza? A pizzeria that I created with some friends. Prime is kind of a New York style pizzeria in Los Angeles, in my opinion, on one of the blocks that feels like a New York block has a lot of different stores, there are a lot of people walking back and forth about three years ago.

I got a call from you guys asking me to come help and open a pizzeria three years later, here we are. You got us off on the right foot and it was with your initial help and dough recipe that we really prospered? I think we just found ourselves trying pizzas. Number one fan. I receive a hug. I'm interested to see what. New York's cutting culture is like in Los Angeles. I'm taking a tour with two friends who are on both sides of the New York LA Pizza spectrum. My son Pauly was born and raised in Queens, where real Queens kids come from.

Queens, I can go to any main street and there's a pizza place that's the neighborhood spot, soKevin, you grew up in Beverly Hills when I was a kid, it was like pizza, it was fun and those like Domino's are cool, you know. Oh, what if? You picked up the phone and told your mother to call Domino's on the day I would be sleeping. You know I'll be sleeping in the backyard, so let's watch like three New York pizzas raised here in Los Angeles. We're starting here at the best time, what's the pizza culture outside of the airport?

It's gloomy there, really. I mean, you know, it's not like in New York, where we don't like pizza on every corner. Let's get a slice real quick on the fly so right there it

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s you that the culture is really different like I didn't know what the ranch was until I got to Los Angeles, what are you dipping that into? Like I'm beautiful, there it is. Oh, there's a variety, this one looks great, what's going on here, this is the square that's our version of grandmas, I'm going with this one, I'm going with that ranch, so , even though we're in Los Angeles, we still gotta go all out, get cool, Sicilian fluffy, yeah, you always want that fluffy, still, yeah, no, you got the last one, BBQ chicken, no, this is what's up, There's a hot penis, come on, the barbecue, mind what I love, oh yeah, really, the guys do a great job, yeah. yeah, yeah, beautiful, so we've got a couple of slices in us, you guys are ready to get to the next two places, yeah, as we were growing up.

Pizza really permeated pop culture in a way that we, yeah, yeah, I mean, I ended up with hello four years in a row. row so I know you know what I was doing I was a ninja turtle it was always fun says he just knew your pizza was involved it was like you know this Saturday is going to be real you know but you saw it like you know growing pains or like the old show like there's no mistake like Orko that the Winslow residence does, like if I stepped on the cow it would come out with the air, okay, our second stop today is a delicious pizza and West Adams, a pizzeria born from the iconic hip . hop record label vinyl delicious their New York style pizza is completely organic and uses a natural homegrown start so the Cali influence is clear, you guys have my favorite things between pizza and hip-hop, a nice combination, don't you think?

I think they're fantastic company, I know they'll start spitting on me in a minute, oh, do you want to hear my buzz when I first walked in? I had no idea you guys were vinyl delicious, I mean you had some great hip-hop artists signed. your IQ label and years later you opened this place, this is kind of a classic area of ​​Los Angeles, they didn't have pizza in this area, so we built this place two years ago and one of the things that keeps coming up when your pizza place comes up is what how good the dough is and how good the crust is Travis is my partner's son our chemist and our baker this is the man behind the dough right here Travis who created his pizza recipe can talk to you about the dough for hours our dough cold fermentation control temperatures as best you can I'm a chair that has figured out how to do it this way better than many factory processes low and slow that's the best good life you guys knocked it out of the park yeah real I believe the pizza looks a lot like a good slice of New York, my body is doing well, yeah I'm trying to figure out where the delivery limit is, so we're on the third stage about pizza tracking, we're at Pizza needs to go downtown artistically. from Los Angeles, it's owned by an iconic professional skateboarder, it has that community feel, they make really amazing pizza and they do really different things too.

We're going into Pete's Mesa open in June 2011. We wanted to create a place where we wouldn't want to hang out and our friends would want to hang out and I've been skating my whole life since the late '70s, I had a great career doing that and one of the things that I've always loved about skateboarding is the camaraderie, right, but that's what you find in pizza, you know, it embraces every ethnic background, socioeconomic background, different, beautiful, that's the encounter with Jesus, the sausage of Jesus, one was meat without cheese, meet Jesus, oh yeah, right, yeah, meat, cheese is twisted, this is good, yeah, it really is.

There's something good about this right now, like being on the street, there are people walking around it almost feels like you're standing outside Jones. It is a window that opens. It's very rare in Los Angeles. This is so good. Amazing vegetables. I really wanted to try this. I love it. when pizzerias like gluten-free vegetarian pizza from vegan pizza you can tell that they are not afraid of the challenge these vegan pizzas so good man it is so different like fresh vegetables are not canned mushrooms this place to me feels so original and its style and it is formed without following any rules and that is just not right, so what do you think friends?

I'm full, yes, it's good pizza, yes, yes, it really opens my eyes, it's amazing the idea that Los Angeles doesn't have great pizza. something wrong, you know what I mean, it's like this is the true definition of a neighborhood with each other, great day, great day, man, thank you so much, come with me absolutely. I feel like yeah man we did it yeah yeah I'll give you a piece of coral 2017 year Thanks Donatello. I'm ending my La Pizza trip with the classic Casa Bianca and Eagle Rock pizza pie. It's been here since 1955. It hasn't changed one bit.

My old friend Brent will be joining me for pizza at Casa Bianca Pizza. But it's his family's favorite pizzeria and they've been coming here for years Frank looks like an Italian Jonathan Gould Ned and his sister took over this business from his parents and worked hard to preserve this classic. I probably grew up in the business. around 11 or 12 they started doing things and helping her and absorbing everything by osmosis. This has evolved so much over the years that you'll give people who come from New York or Chicago and they'll say it tastes like New York or it tastes like Chicago I don't put a label on it, you know, if it tastes good, that's the bottom line. , yes, very good, this has been one of our family's favorite pizzerias, it's iconic, you know where you're going.

This is one of the features that keeps coming up when we talk to people about the I think when you've been here as long as they have, there's a reason, so Ned, what pizza are we eating now? We call it deluxe pizza, yes, sausage, mushrooms and bell peppers just got on the menu. I've been around since day one in 1955, Brent's daughter and I went to college, yeah, we were good friends, the first place he said was Casa Bianca. I saw that I told Brenna to call her dad and she has been a regular customer for many years.

Are there many regular customers who come? There are people here that you see, I see people that have been coming here and then they bring their little kids here and then their kids grow up and they get married and then they bring their kids, yeah, when you think that in California most people I think It is Jaco who is losing Mexican food, what does it mean to be a pizzeria and as iconic as you? Yeah, I think that's one of the interesting things about Los Angeles. There are all kinds of restaurants. I mean, you have a place like ours, which is a throwback to the 1950s and then you have other places, that's the beauty of it, nothing about this city.

I think we are spoiled for choice among pizza trips and here at Casa Bianca Common in Los Angeles I was curious to know what to expect. There is pizza? culture like what is the California style of pizza but in all honesty after all the places we have been the style is there is no style the only rule is there are no rules you can do whatever you want in California as long as Since the pizza tastes good, everyone will be happy.