There is a small argument to be had about whether Pizzeria Mozza makes pizza at all, and it is worth having, because it explains why people who dislike the place dislike it and why the people who love it are so specific about why. The crust is not a Neapolitan crust and it is not trying to be. It is a bread baker's crust — puffed and blistered at the rim, thin and crisp underneath, faintly sweet and faintly sour from a long ferment. If you arrive at the corner of Highland and Melrose expecting Naples, you will be annoyed. If you arrive expecting bread, you will understand it immediately.
The crust is the whole point here, so the order that shows it off is not the one most people pick. Ask Karpo what to get on a first visit to Mozza.
Why the crust is different
Nancy Silverton founded La Brea Bakery before she opened this restaurant in 2006, and that sequence is the entire explanation. Fermentation, hydration and crumb structure are treated here as a baker's problem rather than a pizzaiolo's, which produces a rim with an open, bready interior instead of the thin soft cornicione of a Neapolitan pie. The New York Times once described the result as soft and chewy in places, crisply charred in others, ever so faintly sweet and even more faintly sour — which is an unusually precise piece of food writing and also just an accurate description.
The practical consequence: the rim is food. At most pizzerias the outer inch is the part you leave on the plate. Here it is closer to a very good sourdough end, and ordering as though it is filler wastes half the pizza.
What to order the first time
Resist the temptation to order the most loaded pizza on the list. A first visit is better spent on something restrained — the margherita, or the fennel sausage — where you can actually taste what the dough is doing. Then order one antipasto from the front of the menu, because the vegetable cooking here is genuinely good and gets ignored in the rush to the oven. And do not skip the butterscotch budino, which is the dessert this restaurant is as famous for as any of its pizzas: a dense butterscotch pudding with salted caramel and crème fraîche, and the reason people book here for birthdays.
Sit at the pizza bar
The best seats are at the counter that faces the oven. It takes walk-ins more readily than the dining room, it is the fastest way into a full restaurant, and you can watch the dough being stretched, which in a place where the dough is the argument is more than a novelty. Two people should default to the counter and only book a table if they need to talk quietly.
The other Mozza next door
The thing that confuses first-timers is that there are two restaurants on this corner and they are not the same. Pizzeria Mozza is the pizza and antipasti room. Osteria Mozza, adjoining it, is a separate, more formal restaurant built around a mozzarella bar and a serious pasta list. Booking the wrong one is a common and entirely avoidable mistake — check which name is on the reservation. If the pizzeria is full on a Friday, the osteria will sometimes have space, and it is a different and more expensive evening rather than a substitute.
The corner it sits on
641 North Highland Avenue puts you at the Melrose junction, on the edge of Hancock Park with Larchmont Village a short drive east and the Melrose shopping stretch running west. The building is hard to miss — a sunny yellow corner with an orange canopy that reads more Mediterranean than Los Angeles. This is a corner you drive to; there is valet, and street parking around Highland at dinner time is not a strategy. Larchmont Boulevard is the natural pre-dinner walk if you are early, and it is close enough to make a 6pm arrival with time to spare worth engineering.
Who built it, and why the crust reads like bread
Pizzeria Mozza opened in 2007 as a partnership between Nancy Silverton, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, and the part that survived and still defines the place is Silverton's. She founded La Brea Bakery, which is to say she spent years working on long fermentation and crust structure before she ever built a pizza menu, and the dough here is the direct result. That is why the rim is tall, open-crumbed and a little chewy rather than thin and cracker-crisp, and it is why people who arrive expecting Naples leave arguing about it. It is not trying to be Neapolitan. It is a bread baker's pizza.
Osteria Mozza shares the same corner building at Highland and Melrose but is a separate, more formal restaurant with a mozzarella bar rather than a pizza oven. Confusing the two when booking is the single most common mistake people make here — the reservation you want for a casual pizza dinner is the pizzeria, on the Highland side.
The things on the menu that are not pizza
The chopped salad is the standard opener and is more useful than it sounds, because the pizzas are rich and the crust is filling. The fried squash blossoms with ricotta appear when the season allows. And the butterscotch budino — a dense pudding under a salted caramel layer with a rosemary-pine-nut cookie on the side — is the dessert the restaurant is genuinely famous for, to the extent that people book a seat at the bar and order only that. If you are eating alone or arriving late, the pizza bar plus a budino is a complete and entirely respectable version of the meal.
Practical notes
Pizzeria Mozza is at 641 North Highland Avenue at Melrose, open since 2006. The crust is bread-baker-style: blistered, chewy, faintly sour — order a simple pizza first so you can taste it. Eat the rim. Add one antipasto and the butterscotch budino. The counter facing the oven is the best seat and the easiest walk-in. Osteria Mozza next door is a separate, more formal restaurant — make sure your booking says the right name. Take the valet; Highland parking at dinner is not a plan.
Tags: #LosAngeles #PizzaNearMe #PizzeriaMozza #Melrose #HancockPark #LAEats #NancySilverton #BestPizzaLA #LARestaurants #OsteriaMozza #ButterscotchBudino #Larchmont #WoodFiredPizza #LADining
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know whether the Mozza pizza counter has space tonight, which of the two restaurants on that corner you actually booked, and what to order on a first visit? Ask Karpo before you head to Highland.
