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, gorilla pies.com