10 great new pizza restaurants in L.A., ranked by LA Times critic

9. Olivia

L.A. native and veteran chef Mario Alberto draws his experience working at restaurants like Gjelina, Lazy Ox Canteen and Gracias Madre into the vegetarian menu at his new Koreatown bistro. Among salads and appetizers unnecessarily labeled “crispy chicken” (they’re fried oyster mushrooms, which Angelenos can embrace without meaty pseudonyms, and they’re worth ordering), pizzas take centerstage. Alberto shapes pies so the wide brims bake into bready crusts; they enclose panoramas of pesto and mozzarella dotted with summer corn, dollops of ricotta and squiggles of amaranth leaves, or red sauce made from kimchi covered in gouda, chives and sliced jalapeños. Vegans have options too: The one with English peas rolling across macadamia ricotta and pesto-oat cream sauce is a standout.

205 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 516-4791, oliviarestaurantla.com

8. Ghisallo

Executive chef David Rodriguez and his team craft 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 previously worked alongside Daniele Uditi at Pizzana, an influence that’s easy to trace in options at Ghisallo, like the take on cacio e pepe with garlic confit and ricotta. I might be happiest asking for a couple of pepperoni pizza slices to go and heading down to the stretch of Santa Monica beach where Ocean Park Boulevard ends. That said, it can be just as enjoyable to stick around: The restaurant has a backyard oasis of a patio, with plenty of shade and piles of blankets for when it cools in the evening.

1622 Ocean Park Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 399-4060, ghisallo.la

7. Gorilla Pies

“Osher, not kosher,” reads one of the playful signs on the door of Gorilla Pies. After starting his business as a pop-up out of his apartment, chef-owner Benjamin Osher moved into a former kosher bakery in the same strip mall as Cambridge Farms supermarket. He refers to the place as a “Pittsburgh-style pizzeria,” a reference to the city where he was raised. I translate it to mean he’s doing his own thing without need for other labels. He crafts his pies to have wide rims that blister and brown handsomely in the oven, and their centers have the appealing droop of East Coast-style pizzas; you might end up wrestling it into your mouth, particularly when they’re still molten. His take on a supreme pizza — sausage, mushroom, onions, cherry peppers and sliced black olives — is textbook comfort. In a fun nod to the local Jewish residents, he renders a Reuben sandwich into pizza form, complete with pastrami, a smoked cross between sauerkraut and kimchi and caraway seeds generously speckled over the crust. He calls it “the Rabbi,” and you can try it by the slice as a special on Wednesdays.

12417 Burbank Blvd., Valley Village, (818) 821-3777, gorillapies.com

6. Dtown Pizzeria

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 Wisconsin brick cheese. 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 pieces, before moving on to the airy center. Ososky also dabbles in some outré variations. A stuffed crust situation with meatballs and garlic confit is about as crazy as I’m willing to go; you can tell me your thoughts on the $100 pie covered with A5 Wagyu and truffle oil, my forever nemesis. These sturdy constructs handle takeout exceptionally well, though you can also grab a table at Phorage WeHo, out of which Dtown operates.

7326 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 229-2235, dtownpizzeria.com

5. Pizzeria Bianco

I’ve been eating Chris Bianco’s pizzas for half of my life, beginning in 1997 when the first Pizzeria Bianco had been operating in Phoenix for three years. Even then there was national excitement over the Bronx native — about the ways he was melding Neapolitan pizza traditions and New York know-how into something fresh. The Sonny Boy (a sausage pie covered in mozzarella he smoked over pecan wood) and the Rosa (red onion slivers as thin as a new moon, Parmesan, rosemary, crushed pistachios) taught many of us about the elegance of restraint. The ingredients never overshadowed the crisp, bready crust.

The arrival of Pizzeria Bianco in Los Angeles, its first location outside Arizona, has been long in coming. The massive Manufactory at Row DTLA — his previous, short-lived partnership with Tartine that included Bianco’s restaurant Alameda Supper Club — closed at the end of 2019 after 11 months. In June, he returned to the same complex to open Pizzeria Bianco.

Dinner service, which began at the end of August, focuses on Bianco’s classic menu of pizzas. As of this writing, the restaurant was operating only for lunch, during which the team was experimenting with slices in other pizza styles.
Options include wide, sturdy triangles painted with red sauce or, for a fun departure, spinach-cream sauce, and standout Roman-type squares covered with a mix of mild and sharp cheeses and thin circles of Meyer lemon. They hint at Bianco’s greatness, but I’m betting Los Angeles will better understand what makes him a legend when the wood-burning oven lights up at night.

1320 E. 7th St., Los Angeles, (213) 372-5155, pizzeriabianco.com/los-angeles

4. Side Pie

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 a situation that feels slightly more permanent: 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 — pulled from an oven tiled with a variation of the Grateful Dead’s skull-and-lightning-bolt logo — 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.