That'sa Pizza!

Pizzeria Mozza: This place will always have a fond place in my heart. I had this place earlier on in my food career when my boyfriend at the time whisked me away after a stressful day at work to introduce me to the best pizza he ever ate. Not knowing how different gourmet pizza can be from my favorite take out joint, Pizza Hut, I became a new person that night.

While I have not gone very often, I hold Batali’s pizza as the bar for what great pizza should be. Their pizzas are made with the freshest ingredients. The tomato sauce is tangy and rustic. Their cheese is made in-house and sprinkled with just the right amount (not too much, not too little though nobody ever complains about extra cheese!). And… the perfect bubbly crust which makes the pizza. Just to give you a little background, I am not a crusty person. I am that girl that would cut the middle of the pie and eat it if you’d let me. Why waste my stomach space on an area that does not contain cheese, meat, or tomato? Worse of all, it is usually pretty dry and hard to eat. Well that mentality changed after having Mozza’s light, airy crust.

Fast forward a few years, I have yet to find another pizza place as tasty as Pizzeria Mozza. Recently his pizzeria gave me a new reason to come back: Nancy Silverton’s new Wednesday night Italian-rubbed baby back ribs. Boy oh boy were they tasty! Extremely flavorful – tangy, savory, spicy, and moderately saucy. The aromatics on the ribs fill your senses with every new bite. They aren’t bbq so don’t expect smoke or grill marks on this baby. Also, unlike your traditional baby backs, these are much smaller. It’s an interesting cut – only half the size of what you are used to. (They are more like Chinese short ribs if that means anything to you.) Don’t fret though! The volume of flavor truly does make up for the smaller size.

On that night, I also shared two pizzas – the Bacon, salami, fennel sausage, guanciale, tomato & mozzarella and the Egg, bacon, Yukon gold potato & Bermuda onions. The first one was basically a meat lovers-kinda pizza (YEA!!). It was ok. I wished it had a little more tomato sauce on it and more bubbly in the crust. The second pizza was better. I was surprised by how tender the potatos were, and I was more than stoked to have an egg on my pizza. The egg didn’t quite live up to the idea I had of it – maybe if it was bigger? It is tough to get enough of the egg on the pizza when its divvied up into four slices.

Sadly, the pizzas weren’t quite what I remembered. Maybe I did not order the right ones. Their maragherita (mozzarella, tomato & basil) is their best pizza after all, and I previously loved their prosciutto. Maybe it was the ribs. They were just so damn delicious it suppressed every other capable sensation that night. Or maybe it was that treasured first memory – it’sa Amore! Regardless, I will still love this pizzeria and now I have the ribs to look forward to.

641 N Highland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90036