Pizzeria Mozza

The much anticipated arrival of Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton’s collabo restarant is, as with most things in LA, over hyped. Although most human beings wouldn’t eat at 10pm, I was taken in with the ridiculous buzz of this restaurant and decided to try it out.
At first glance, Mozza seems like a relaxed neighborhood restaurant. However, upon further review, I realized that most of the people in there were young Hollywood hipsters who were on the latest craze in Los Angeles.

Batali’s pizzas are supposed to have the quality and flavor from his teachings with an old woman who he lived with while training in Italy as a youth. I learned this from reading Heat by Bill Buford which was an over detailed story about Batali’s culinary training. And indeed, the pizzas were met with very distinct Italian recipes and ingredients. The dough which is always the key part to making a great pizza is Silverton’s recipe and definitely the best part of the pizza. The dough was light yet crunchy enough, probably due to her expertise from her first restaurant, Campanile. The toppings, which I’m guessing was Batali’s contribution to the pizza was less than inspiring.

The wine list was very good, as it had a lot of options with younger, drinkable Italian wines. Pizza and booze, I guess you really can’t go wrong with that.

The best thing about the restaurant was the fact that Silverton was still putting the final touches on the pizzas which gave me some more reason to go back a second time. It gave me hope the Silverton and Batali weren’t simply in it to sell there name brand. The chicken liver bruschetta and the squash blossoms are the things to try for appetizers and probably the lardo pizza. If he was thinking about an expensive pizza joint with high quality ingredients, why not go all the way? Why not serve a duck confit with truffle cheese pizza? Why not have the seasonal truffle pizza like Angelini Osteria? When you end up serving sausage pizza with fennel or eggplant pizza, you lose the credibility from charging $10 pizzas. In all honesty, I prefer Angelini Osteria’s pizzas more than Mozza’s. People might try it once, but with the impossible reservation list, I would wait until the buzz dies down. Batali’s first trattoria in LA opening right next door in the next few months might be worth the wait though.