Verrazano's Pizza

UPDATE 5/6/10

A sad day for pizza in LA. Verrazano's, one of the best places to get a NY pie in LA, had a fire in their kitchen. It has caused them to shut their doors. It is a shame. They are hoping to open back up in the future. However, when something like this happens, it is hard to get back on the horse and start all over again.

I for one hope they have the motivation and money to rebuild and reopen. It was my go to pizza spot and one of the best in LA. I wish them luck.

BELOW is the past review:

It is a very exciting week, 2 new places opened in the Hollywood area. Both of them better than most. The other one is Cristoni.(which has now closed its hollywood location)

First however I went to Verrazano's. This is a place that is a New York City transplant. So when they say they have the authentic New York pizza experience, those aren't just words. Though just coming from NY doesn't mean you will make good pizza. Of course this is one of the few places that actually has the owners working and making the pizza. They haven't hired a bunch of people who don't know anything about pizza and then expect them to make one. So I new I was getting something special.

I ordered a large cheese pizza, the only size they have, which is 18 inches. They also have slices. It was 17 dollars. I picked it up and when I opened the box I saw something unusual to LA.

The pizza had cheese spots. Instead of shredded cheese, it was slices, small slices of mozzarella. There are of course many other places that cook their Margherita Pizza like this, but they aren't cut in such small sizes. I don't like too much cheese, but I was worried about this one because I thought there might not be enough. Surprisingly, there was just the right amount. Whether it was fresh or not was hard to tell, the cheese flavor wasn't that prominent, seeing as it wasn't covering the whole pizza. The prominent flavor of course was the sauce. Which I liked a lot. It was a sweet sauce, very finely chopped tomato, it wasn't too runny or too thick, it was just the right consistency with an addicting sweet and tomatoey taste. The crust was thin and crispy, and tasted pretty good too, lots of flour on the bottom. Though the freshness of the crust is in question. It was a little dense and dry. It could have been a lot crispier as well. It became a little tough after the pizza cooled a bit. It was a very simple pizza, from the crust to the cheese and the sauce, no extra spices. Just a very basic cheese, tomato, bread flavor. Some might not like the simplicity of it. For me I thought the crust was pretty close to perfect, and the sauce was awesome and I will be going back.

I hope this place will be around a while.

I went back recently and ordered the highly recommended meatball and ricotta pie, called the Denino. This was great. I love ricotta and there were nice chunks of it all over the place, along side some spicy crumbly meat. This was all on top of the same pizza as the original with tomato sauce and mozz. This is one slice that I could not eat in the car, believe me I tried. The weight of the ricotta was just too much. Everything else was the same as above, and again I highly recommend it. It will run you 5 dollars more than the plain unfortunately but if you like ricotta - worth it.

Verrazano's Pizza

612 N. La Brea 90036

Price: $$

Overall: