Mama Mia!: Paying More for Less at Mother Dough

Mother Dough (spelled hipster/ee cummings style with no caps - "mother dough") is a Neapolitan style pizzeria on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz that's been getting a lot of praise, and while the pizza is generally good, the prices are way out of whack for what you get.

We orderd two appetizers. The sardine crostini, for $8, was two slices of bread topped with a single basil leaf and a white sardine with lemon juice and orange zest. It was fine, but very small. The charcuterie plate, on the other hand, was quite good with a variety of salumis, speck and other cuts.

The pizzas are the single serving, traditional Neapolitan style and range from $15 to $19 per pie. The Margherita pizza was quite good, with a thin, chewy crust, and a tangy sauce that went well with the gooey buffalo mozzarella. The sausage pizza was less interesting. The house made sausage sliced over the top was decent but not great, lacking much in the way of spice and it seemed like an afterthought, tossed on top without a sense of how it would meld with the sauce and cheese.

I must say I don't get the hype around this place (given there is an Umami Burger across the street, this may be the most overhyped block in LA). In the world of LA pizza, Mother Dough is pretty decent, though not fantastic. Unfortnately, the place is a terrible value. The prices at MoDo seem to average about a dollar more than Mozza, while the pizza is nowhere near as good as those revelatory pies, and the portions are much smaller. Of course, it's a lot easier to get a table at Mother Dough, so maybe you're paying for the privilege of being able to dine-in, sort of a reverse delivery charge. Still, I'll take Mozza2Go over a table at MoDo any day of the week.

In any case, while the food was decent, I had no desire to return.


mother dough
4648 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Phone: (323) 644-2885

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza at Masa

Masa of Echo Park has been around for about five years, but I'd never made it there until now. The owners are from Chicago and they specialize in Chicago style deep dish pizza. Now, I must admit that I've never been a huge fan of Chicago style pizza nor have I had one in Chicago. In fact, I've only been to Chicago a few time, and when there, I tend to concentrate on hot dogs and Italian beef. Most Chicago-style pizzas I've had in other places are just too doughy for me.

The first thing to know about Masa is that the deep dish pizza takes 40 minutes to bake. Next time I go, I'll call ahead, but otherwise, get some appetizers. I especially enjoyed the artichoke dip which was thick with artichokes, and a nice acid in it and was less cheese-heavy than some versions.

The pizza itself was big and dense. Deep dish pizza must way more per pound than any other food. A single slice of the large pie was sufficient for most people in our group. We ordered the traditional pie which has mushrooms and a nice, well spiced sausage slice on top. The sauce is tangy and packs a big garlic wallop. The crust is crunchy, glistening with oil, though I still feel like it's a lot of bread in there, but at least it was all well cooked.

If there are any Chicago-ites or deep dish lovers out there who've been to Masa, I'd love to hear how it compares to the real thing. For my part, I liked it and will likely head back. They have a large menu beyond the deep dish, including regular pizzas, pasta, other entrees and a particularly enticing sounding croissant bread pudding, which I will undoubtedly need to try.


Masa of Echo Park
1800 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 989-1558

Mozza on the Home Front: Mozza2Go

I've dined once each at Pizzeria Mozza and Osteria Mozza, and while I enjoyed the food, the hassle of trying to wrangle a reservation has, thus far, been too much to lure me back. All of that changed with the recent opening of Mozza2Go, the new, take-out arm of the Pizzeria.

Operating out of a little storefront on Melrose adjacent to the Osteria, Mozza2Go offers a stripped down version of the Pizzeria menu. A recent visit confirmed my previous assertion that the pizza is good, but the most amazing tastes can be found elsewhere on the menu. In this case, the dish that warmed my innards was the chicken liver bruschetta with capers, parsley & guanciale, a spruced up version of chopped liver on a cracker topped with bacon. The chopped liver had a liberal spritz of citrus which cut the richness perfectly, and the guanciale added salty, porky notes which gave it the perfect balance of richness, salt and acid, and a beautiful contrast of mushy liver and crunchy pork fat.

Also excellent was Mario's Lasagna. This was one of the richest lasagnas I've ever had. I'm not sure what they use to get that effect, possibly veal, maybe some livers, but it is rich and creamy and wonderful, though pricey at $21 for a modest serving.

And yes, they do have the butterscotch budino on the take out menu.

Even more enticing is that fact that they deliver, and to a wide area. I was shocked that they my Koreatown abode was within their delivery zone. Not even Village Pizza in Larchmont, which is 5 minutes away, will deliver east of Western.

So kudos to Mozza for this stroke of brilliance. At last, chicken liver bruschetta with guanciale on my couch!

Mozza2Go
6610 Melorse Ave. (park in the Mozza lot on Highland)
Los Angeles, CA 90038
(323) 297-1130

Sunset & Hollywood: Il Capriccio Pizza

There is a section of Disney California Adventure called the Hollywood Pictures Backlot which is set up to like the backlot of a movie studio. It's all very post-modern; Disney's parks, of course, use various sets and props to create an artificial environment, but the Hollywood section contains sets and props that are meant to look like Hollywood sets and props. That is, they are fake fakes.

As a resident of the greater Hollywood area, I've always been amused at a street sign in this section of the park which indicates that it is the intersection of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards. As a tourist from abroad or the Midwest, the idea of this intersection must conjure some romantic notion of movie stars and glamor. We Angelenos, of course, know that this particular intersection is anything but glamorous. Standing in the shadow of the Kaiser complex and within view of a Circuit City, there's not really much there, other than a Von's.

Now, however, the Italian restaurant Il Capriccio has opened a pizza shop, Il Capriccio Woodfire Pizzeria, right at this apparently storied intersection. I took a few trips to check it out.

First I tried the salsiccia, a sausage, garlic, rosemary pie. The sausage was nice, but I didn't taste the rosemary. The whole thing was a bit too salty, but I did find myself reaching for more. I went on to try cheese and pepperoni pizzas, both good, if standard pies.

The thing that really shines at Il Capriccio is the crust. It's the right amount of chewy, slightly charred and just a tad salty. Crust is probably the hardest element of pizza to get right, but Il Capriccio does a good job with it.

All of the pizza was above average, though none of it left me in the throws of pizza exhilaration. Still, if you're in the area and wanting pizza, it's a good bet, and Disney California Adventure would be lucky to have pizza that good at its Sunset and Hollywood.


Il Capriccio Pizza
4518 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 644-9760

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

Mozza, Hold the Pizza

I'm not one to flock to the latest big restaurant on opening night. I avoid crowds and celebrity chefs. Sure, in the first month or two when Tom Colicchio is babysitting Craft or Wolfgang Puck is running the grill at Cut, the food will be great. But after they get their three stars from Miss Irene at the Times and the hubbub dies down, then what happens. Do they keep producing quality food or do the rest on their laurels? The true test of a great restaurant is whether it can produce high quality food over time.

This is why I had so far avoided Pizzeria Mozza and its cousin Osteria Mozza, the product of a collaboration between Iron Chef Mario Batali and local bread-winner Nancy Silverton. The restaurant opened to rave reviews from Virbila, Jonathan Gold and the like, some calling it the best pizza in LA, but that was last year, and now Mario has gone back to New York and it's just another restaurant, one that I decided it was time to visit.

Of course, it's still impossible to get a reservation, unless you like booking dinner at 3:30 (am or pm), but when I walked into the Pizzeria at 6:00 on a Wednesday evening, there were a few spaces at the bar and a pretty good turnover.

We had an appetizer, two pizzas and dessert. The funny thing is than while the appetizer and dessert blew us away, the pizzas, while good, did not seem all that special.

Our appetizer was bone marrow al forno, consisting of ovenbaked beef bone marrow, served with toast, roasted garlic, sea salt and a microscopic micro-greens salad. The marrow, served in three sections of a cow femur, was luscious...fatty, tender, beefy, garlicky, rich and served so hot that I burnt a finger grabbing the piece of bone. The salad, which really should have been larger, had a nicely acidic lemon dressing which cut perfectly through the grease and richness of the marrow. The roasted garlic was superfluous.

The two pizzas were the Gorgonzola dolce, fingerling potatoes, radicchio & rosemary and the "meat lovers pizza" with sausage, salami, bacon & guanciale. These were both good pizzas. The crusts are big, fluffy...nice and chewy, and the toppings are well done, but they just didn't live up to the hype. Frankly, I'd just as soon eat a good ole' Casa Bianca sausage and green olive pie.

Much has been written about the butterscotch budino dessert, and it did live up to the hype. A rich, creamy butterscotch pudding, topped with salt and whipped cream, the budino joins my custard hall of fame. I briefly considered ordering a second, but decided better of it. The accompanying rosemary cookies were not to my liking, but I was a bit over-rosemaried from the pizza.

I may go back to Mozza, if I hear the siren song of marrow or butterscotch pudding, but it won't be for the pizza.

Pizzeria Mozza
641 N. Highland Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 297-0101

The Best of the Farmers Market

For my big Third and Fairfax roundup, I'm dividing the food stands into three tiers. The top tier are the very best, places worth a special trip to the Market. The second tier are very good; maybe not worth a special trip, but good choices if you happen to be there. Third are the rest..the unexceptional and unexciting.

This week is the top tier. These are my very favorites, the old standbys I rely on most and a new try that impressed me. I'm still tasting, so this list isn't complete and more may qualify for the top tier (and sweet shops will be handled in a separate post). They are listed in no particular order.


Monsieur Marcel's

This French Bistro started as a small cheese kiosk and has expanded into a full-on restaurant with its own seating and a gourmet market. This French bistro makes the best fondue in LA. They have a traditional Gruyere based fondue, which is good, but the highlight is their signature Fondue Savoyarde which includes other more flavorful cheeses such as Morbier and Roquefort. I also enjoy their moules frite and their croque monsieur. Take pains, though, to avoid their adjacent gourmet market of the same name which is vastly overpriced.


Moishe's Village



This stand, specializing in Boerek, was a new try for me but one that will definitely enter my pantheon of staples. No, Boerek was not that movie about that guy from Kazakhstan. It is a Turkish pastry served at a stand adjacent to the original Moishe's Middle Eastern stand. It's similar to a rectangular pizza, topped with cheese and your choice of toppings...I can't get enough of the egg. Two eggs, sunny-size up are fried onto the dough. The soft whites and fluid yolks mesh with the cheese and dough to create a delicious doughy, cheesy, eggy delight. I also enjoyed the spinach and cheese as well as the interesting sides like Swiss chard tzatziki and white beans in tomato sauce. As far as I know, Moishe's Village is the only place in LA where you can get this particular, pizza-like version of Boerek (as opposed to the Armenian meat pies of the same name available in Hollywood).


¡Loteria!



I was a late convert to the Mexican stalwart at the center of the market, and I still think this Mexico City style snack shop tends to be a bit overrated by reviewers, but that may be due to the dearth of good Mexican in this part of mid-city. They make a whopping eleven different type of tacos, but I find their pre-made fillings to be generally underseasoned. Their mole is popular, but it pales in comparison to the excellent Oaxacan moles you can get at numerous locations a mere ten minutes away. However, their chilaquiles (a breakfast dish consisting of fried tortilla chips with sauce) are some of the best in town; I like them with the tangy salsa verde. They also make an excellent version of queso fundido (Mexican fondue) topped with chorizo, which is a dish that's not easy to find in LA. And they do a great nacho plate, of all things, though sometimes the plate could use a few more minutes under the broiler.


Patsy D’Amore’s Pizza



In a city in which good pizza is a scarcity, Patsy's tends to fly under the radar, but this FM stalwart (with mandatory photo of the owner mugging with Frank Sinatra) consistently pumps out good, thin crust New York style pies. The toppings ain't much, so stick with plain cheese.


Pampas Grill

A relatively recent entrant into the FM, Pampas Grill puts a fast food spin on the Brazilian churrascaria. All of the traditional elements are part of the Pampas buffet: the massive salad bar, the scrumptious cheese breads, fried yuca, feijoda (black bean stew), and of course, the meat. Pampas has all the traditional churrascaria cuts: picanha (garlic beef), alcatra (sirloin), lamb leg, bacon wrapped chicken and sausage (pet peeve: why can't I find chicken hearts at any LA currascaria?) The food is good and it's a lot cheaper than you will pay at any sit-down currascaria.

The French Crepe Company

This creperie dishes out sizable crepes, both sweet and savory. The white flour creates a result that is more akin to a thin, dense pancake than a traditional French buckwheat crepe, but the results are still delicious. For savory, I love the Raclette, prosciutto and cornichon crepe...it's especially good when drizzled with some of their dijon mustard salad dressing. For sweet, I like the Grand Marnier, or just the plain crepe filled with butter and sugar and topped with whipped cream.


Du-Par's Restaurant

I've written before about the great pies at this newly rehabbed diner which anchors the west side of the Market, but Du-Par's is more than just pies. The light fluffy pancakes are an LA institution and they make one of the last great Monte Cristo sandwiches.



So that's my best of the best so far. Next week, I will post my second tier. Meanwhile, I'm still trying stands; so far, I've tried 27 over the last two months. I have only two more to try that I've never been to before and three I need to revisit because it has been a while since I sampled their wares.

Onward and upward...