Today for lunch I tried Caioti Pizza Cafe in Studio City. I'm not sure what that means or how it's pronounced. This Ed LaDou's restaurant, the great pizza innovator, known for creating the "california style" pizza. This place is on Tujunga, on a nice little street with cool shops, restaurants and such. They serve 3 different kinds a pizza. One is New York style, which comes in a bigger size and has sauce, cheese and toppings. This is the style everyone is familiar with and the style I ordered. Then they have what they call Old World pizza, this includes some classics like, Margherita and Pizzetta Bianco. These do not have your traditional sauce on them and come in a small personal size. Finally the New World pizza style they offer, known by others as California style. Basically the toppings are the difference, BBQ chicken pizza and a lamb sausage pizza. The New York style large is 14 inches and is 14 dollars for a cheese.
This brings me to an issue of mine. I have found with a lot of the pizza places in the valley, that they offer all their pizza with an option of thin, medium or thick crust. Caioti too does this, with all their different styles of pizza, you'd think they would not offer this, but they do.
Now, you might think, what's the problem with this. It is great that they give you the option of having it any way you like. Yes this is nice, but this makes the style of pizza irrelevant. When Caioti Pizza says they have a New York style pizza, I am assuming it is thin crust. If you leave the decision of the style of crust up to me, and I can make it what ever I want, what makes that New York style. The thickness and consistency of the crust is pretty much the defining characteristic of New York pizza. How can you order a chicago deep dish pizza but ask for it thin crust, or order a cheese steak with no cheese.
The point is if you are going to claim a style of a certain food, you should do it in that style and not make it however the person wants it, especially if you are going to go and have several different styles in one place.
Anyway, sorry for that. I'm just annoyed because I feel to give them a proper review of their pizza they should give me the pizza they claim as best, but if they make it any way I want, how do I know how it was meant to be served. It's like I have to order 3 pizzas to find the best one, I don't want to do that, I have enough pizza to eat. The default thickness is medium of course, but I got scared that'd be too thick, so I went with the thin crust.
The pizza looked great. ( sorry I forgot my camera again) It was very crispy and cooked well done. The outer crust had an interesting shape to it, it kind of rounded down in slope like fashion, rather than more round on the inside and straight down on the outside, if that makes any sense. I ate one right away, it was pretty tasty at first. The first slice rating was a 4.5. However it quickly dropped on the second slice to about a 3.5. The sauce was a little heavy, and the cheese was a little sparse and not completely fresh and genuine. There was a lot of spices going on, in the sauce and on top, bordering on too much, but it tasted good. The crust was again crispy, but was kind of chewy and stale, the outer edge was more crunchy, than crispy and doughy. Overall not a bad pizza, but I had some issues, maybe I'll go back and try a thicker crust.
Price: $$
Overall:
I live in the neighborhood and no matter how you slice it, thin, thick, Chicago,New York, Caioti Pizza, sucks!!!!!! In Italy, there is no thick crust Pizza, thats called bread or Focaccio or Sicilian Pizza, what they make in Napoli is Margherita Pizza, you also can get quatro Stagione(four seasons) with prosciotto, artichokes. I don't know how this restaurant survives , I guess ignorance is bliss.
ReplyDeletesucks with 6 of these : !!!!! is a little over dramatic. It is o.k. pizza. It is of course not Napolitana pizza. It is more NY style than anything. Although a 14 inch large is no NY style.
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