Italian expert says LA is the Best Pizza City in the USA
Paul Feinstein on Beverly Grove, West Third, and the offensively priced delicious slices at the Farmers Market
Paul Feinstein is all the things women claim they want in a man: he’s tall, well-educated, went to cooking school, worked his way through college as a bartender (in his dad’s gay bar — more of that in the podcast), is a travel writer, and a food journalist.
Plus he has three pizza ovens at home.
But sorry, ladies, he’s a married man with a toddler. However, the things he knows about and brings to the page will enhance all of our lives. Plus his knowledge of his neighborhood, Beverly Grove, is eye-opening.
In our conversation we talk about all of those things in great detail, but on this blog post we’ll keep it just to pizza, since he made the bold claim that LA is a better city for the Italian treat than Chicago or even New York.
Click the play button for the whole chat or keep scrolling for the pizza highlights that have been edited for clarity and so you don’t think I stutter when I talk about delicious foods and drinks.
Tony Pierce: Are you a fan of the Farmer’s Market?
Paul Feinstein: So there’s a pizza place that moved in there called Friends and Family, which is really good, although it’s way too expensive.
They do natural yeast — so they use a starter to make their pizza, and it’s awesome pizza. The flavor of the dough is incredible.
So it’s like a $20 pizza?
It’s more. It’s stupid. It’s really — it’s actually offensive how expensive it is.
But every once in a while I just want that tangy crust — it’s like a sourdough crust, basically, it’s so good.
It doesn’t sound like they do slices.
No, they do. And that’s the worst part. You you should order a whole pizza, because the slices are like $7 and so stupid. You can get like four slices or you can get in a whole pie.
It’s dumb, but it’s great.
Can I tell you the worst place on West Third Street?
Yes please!
So I get a piece of mail a few days ago and it’s one of those city ordinance “come to the meeting for X, Y and Z” pieces of mail.
I open it up and it’s for Berri’s Pizza. There’s a few locations around the city, but the one on West Third Street is like a post-club hangout. So from 2am to 4am it’s like the scene where they put out a velvet rope and the whole thing.
But there has been a murder, there’s been fights… this piece of mail from the city… I don’t know if they’re trying to change their hours or trying to kick them out completely, but the laundry list of violations was maybe two dozen deep of all of these incidents over the years.
The murder there was a couple months ago. I couldn’t walk on the street.
From two to four AM it is the worst, worst, worst, worst place to be and it’s right there on West Third. As bougie as West Third is, from two to four it is a post-club drunken crazy violent thing that happens.
Speaking of West Third. Do you remember that hot tub place that used to be on Third and Crescent Heights?
It’s so funny. So like that hot tub place used to be on Blind Date and all those dumb dating shows.
Yes! And Third Wheel.
Those hot tubs must have been so gross. I forget the name of the place.
Like Bubbles or something? [Turns out it was Splash]
During the pandemic it was a Chinese food restaurant that was actually pretty good. But they went out of business and now there’s some new cafe going in there on that corner.
In an earlier episode my guest said because there’s not a lot of Italians in LA, most of the best Italian restaurants are in San Gabriel.
Okay, first of all, that’s completely wrong. Let me give you a little bit of Italian history. So there used to be a Little Italy downtown, close to where Union Station is.
There are hundreds of Italian restaurants in Los Angeles. First and foremost.
Good ones though?
LA has gone through a bit of an Italian renaissance in the last 15 years. 15 years ago, you could pretty much only see like red sauce Italian places — finding regional Italian places was a little bit harder.
Are you giving credit to Jon & Vinny’s?
No, I give no credit to Jon and Vinny.
I’ll give a lot of credit to Nancy Silverton. She gets a lot of credit for revolutionizing pizza in Los Angeles.
In the last 15 years, LA’s Italian food scene has become more regional and what I mean that by that is that it’s a lot less Italian American like spaghetti and meatballs and it’s more like celebrating specific areas of Italy.
So downtown there’s Rossoblu, which is an Emilia-Romagna regional restaurant.
There’s all of Evan Funke restaurants Felix, Mother Wolf, Funke, they’re all celebration of Rome, specifically.
Mother Wolf is actually good food?
[Seemingly disappointed at the question] He’s a very good chef.
It’s not just a trendy hard-to-get-into place to meet fancy people?
It’s that as well.
But it’s good food once you’re there?
Yeah. So there’s been a pizza revolution. There’s been a pasta revolution.
There has been a pizza revolution. But I guess I never considered it Italian-Italian.
Well, pizza is Italian.
I know I know…
It was invented in Italy.
I mean, there’s a robot making pizza now at USC.
Alright, but you have to say what kind of pizza we’re talking about, because there’s different styles, there’s different types.
There’s Neapolitan, there’s Roman, there’s Sicilian, there’s Detroit, there’s Chicago… there’s New York —
I also thought the Italians didn’t want to take credit for pizza.
It depends on who you talk to. If someone’s from Naples, yeah, they want to take credit for pizza because Naples is where pizza was born in the 1800s.
You could argue what is authentic pizza? considering that tomatoes are from Peru, flatbreads are from Egypt, buffalo mozzarella is from India.
Have you ever seen pineapples on pizza in Italy?
No.
They throw it right out?
No. It’s just not a thing.
Have you seen that TikTok couple where the guy’s Italian and his wife is American and she does wacky things with Italian food on purpose to rile him up?
Yes.
As an Italian expert. Are they exaggerating? Or would most Italians respond that way?
Anything you’re gonna see on TikTok is gonna be for entertainment value. So like they’re probably exaggerating a little bit, but I think the average Italian would probably be a little bit mortified by the whole thing.
So is LA as good or better for pizza than New York?
I think LA is the best pizza city in the country, by far.
Of those pizzas, what’s your top two?
It depends on the style, so I can’t just give you a top two. I will give you a little bit extra.
So just straight Neapolitan, like classic, classic classic Neapolitan where it’s droopy in the middle and it flops over is L’antica Pizzeria da Michele in Hollywood.
Where in Hollywood is this?
Between Sunset and Hollywood on a little street that starts with an…
So over by Hollywood High?
Yeah, close to there. Yeah, pretty close.
So that place is actually from Naples, like it’s one of the OG Naples pizzerias and they licensed the recipe to this wonderful gentleman named Francesco Zimone, and he built that pizzeria here in Los Angeles.
This isn’t the one on Hollywood with the Sinatra mural on the side?
No, that’s Miceli’s — a red sauce, Italian place where the waiter sing. It’s fine. It’s just not my favorite, but it’s fine.
So your second one?
So that’s just for Neapolitan. Pizzana, they’re now in multiple locations, but the with the original Pizzana is in Brentwood.
He’s a guy who’s from Caserta. His name is Daniele Uditi.
Caserta is just outside of Naples and he did his own version of Neapolitan so that the pizza doesn’t flop over. But it’s incredible.
He put a little starch in the collar?
No. He’s just a genius.
And an offshoot of that is Tokyo Style Pizza, which is another Neapolitan style, but they do some different things with the crust. And there’s a place called Pizzeria Sei on Pico and Robertson that is phenominal.
So Chicago style: I like a place called Blackbird. It’s on Melrose.
You’re telling a Chicagoan about Chicago pizza?
Do you not know about Blackbird?
I do not.
Do you know about Masa?
I love Masa.
Yeah, so I think it’s better than Masa.
I love to hear this. I mean, no disrespect to our good friends at Masa.
Masa is great, but I think Blackbird’s better. Yeah.
And you say that on Melrose? I am so blessed to have you here today.
And for Sicilian, I like Prime, they do a Sicilian slice.
Your knowledge is amazing. What do you attribute this to?
Oh I don’t know…
You know the chef’s name, where it’s at, you know how to spell the thing.
You’re from Colorado of all places!
This is what I do for a living. This is my job.
Trust me, there’s a lot of people who do crappy jobs.
Yes, there’s no question.
But it’s fun for me to go down rabbit holes and get into the weeds and meet these chefs and become friends with them and write about them and celebrate them.
I love LA and I love all of the experimentation that goes on here and I celebrate it, but I want to do it right.
That was just a slim slice of the big beautiful pie we have waiting for you when you click the button above to hear the whole conversation.
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Songs by Orgone and Jordan Katz.
Special thanks to Cindy for creating the logo
and Jen for inspiring this,
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