Mr. Pizza Factory

There's probably not much to be said about this Korean pizza joint on Wilshire that hasn't already been said in this hilarious review by Jonathan Gold, one of his best.

I recently stopped into the lone US outpost of this massive Korean chain. We had a few decent but unremarkable appetizers (potato skins and calamari) before the main event: the Grand Prix, a half shrimp, half potato pizza with a built in dessert in the form of a scone crust.

Unlike Gold, I actually enjoyed this monstrosity. The potato half includes potato wedges and ham. I thought the flavors melded well. As Mozza's popular potato rosemary pizza demonstrates, potatoes actually do well on pizza. The shrimp half includes varies veggies, olives and some small pieces of sausage. While not outstanding, both were enjoyable.

The scone crust, which forms the crust ring around the pizza, is a nice, moist scone with raisins. It's tasty when dipped in the very sweet, slightly artificial tasting and somewhat addictive strawberry dipping sauce.

We also had a bulgogi pizza which I expected to be another cross-cultural wonder, but it was really just a regular pizza with some slightly sweet ground beef...not much different from something you'd get at Domino's.

An especially entertaining element of the meal are the pizza chefs, who twirl, toss and magically manipulate the raw dough, drawing flocks of kids, and a few adults as well, to observe their magic. It's like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, but with pizza.

Mock it all you want...I had fun at Mr. Pizza Factory and enjoyed the flavor combinations involved in this Asian interpretation of an Italian and American classic. I'll be back when I get that particular craving for shrimp-potato-scone pizza with strawberry sauce.

Mr. Pizza Factory
3881 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90010
(213) 738-0077