Gold Dig #52

Pizzana is the current LA pizza craze. If you go for dinner or during the weekend, it’s an hours long wait. The Sprinkles Cupcakes folks and Chris O’Donnell and his wife have ownership stake in Pizzana. I have to admit that the celebrity involvement and the insane line made me skeptical, but it’s on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list, and he says he willingly waits in the line. We went on a weekday right around 11:00am when they open and didn’t have to wait, but the place did pretty quickly fill up. If you’re thinking about ordering a pizza to-go to avoid the line, think again, as Pizzana doesn’t do takeout.

The Dish

Well, apparently there’s good reason why Pizzana has big-name backers and people willing to queue up for hours to get their hands on some of its food. The Neapolitan pizza is darn good. The crust is thin, but not soggy or floppy. It’s crisp, with charred bits, and good chew. The toppings are minimalist but do a spectacular job of creating amazing flavor combos.

Cacio e Pepe

Pizzana manages to make a pizza that tastes exactly like one of my favorite pasta dishes – cacio e pepe. They accomplish this by topping the pizza with a heavy sprinkling of pepper and drizzles of Parmesan cream. Genius. I went to Pizzana on a mission to see if the Cacio e Pepe lived up to the hype, and I was not disappointed.

Pignatiello

When I asked our waiter what “Neapolitan Sunday gravy” was and he told us it’s short ribs slow-cooked in tomato sauce, it was clear that the Pignatiello had to be our next order. Even though I had come for the Cacio e Pepe and it totally lived up to expectations, I liked the Pignatiello even more. My mouth is watering right now just thinking about the super tender deeply flavored short ribs with hits of basil blending with Parmesan cream.