10 GREAT L.A. PIZZA PLACES TO TRY NOW

IT’S A NEW PIE ERA. THESE ARE THE BEST OF SOCAL’S LATEST DOUGH BEAUTIES

THIS IS AN excellent time to be hungry for pizza in Los Angeles. More top-notch pizzerias flourish across our region than ever before, in practically every style conceived across America in the last century — and some still in evolution. Thick and plush or thin and crisp; minimalist or maximalist with sauce and cheese; plain and pepperoni, or creations that are basically salads with crusts: Los Angeles has become a clearinghouse for all manner of pizza.

It’s a relatively recent phenomenon. Even a dozen years ago, L.A. wasn’t much of a pizza town. Our stake in the genre was the designer pie. Ed LaDou, who died in 2007, is credited as a chief architect: In 1982, he was the first pizza chef at Spago, working alongside Wolfgang Puck as the soon-to-be-omnipresent smoked salmon creation came together, and a few years later LaDou created the barbecue chicken pizza (among other ideas) for California Pizza Kitchen. In the new millennium, Nancy Silverton’s squash blossom and burrata beauties gifted Los Angeles with pizzas worthy of magazine covers.

Also, as in every American city, L.A.’s neighborhood pizzerias took cues from New York’s wide, made-for-slices prototypes or the pan-baked variations that flourished in the Midwest and made them their own. For as long as they operate, places like Casa Bianca in Eagle Rock (a crackery pie crowned with sausage and breaded eggplant is a longtime favorite of my editor Laurie Ochoa and her family) and Zelo in Arcadia (where the cornmeal crust pies pleasantly veer just shy of Chicagoan deep-dish casseroles) will always have their adherents.

Plenty of fantastic pizza has appeared over the last decade: Daniele Uditi’s neoNeapolitan standard-bearers at Pizzana; the consistent and smart combinations at Cosa Buona, Ronan and Jon & Vinny’s; and the exceptional square slice at Apollonia’s, to name a handful.

Now we’ve arguably reached a pinnacle, spurred by pandemic-era pop-ups establishing more permanent bases of operation and an ongoing local and national appetite for Detroit-style square pies and, well, because it’s time. I have eaten enough pizza in the last few weeks to test my undying love for the stuff. I wholeheartedly recommend each of the following 10 pizzerias, but for fun I ranked them.