Caioti Pizza Cafe

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.

Caioti Pizza Cafe - Tujunga Village, Studio City

Price: $$

Overall:

Richie Palmer's Pizzeria

I was in Santa Monica today and I tried to find a place called Joe's Pizza, which is the same as the Joe's in Brooklyn on Bleecker Street.  Anyway I couldn't find it for some reason.  So I went to the other pizza joint on Ocean Ave.  This place is called Richie Palmer's, and it seems like a pretty good place.  I didn't want to wait for a whole pizza so I only got 2 slices.  Besides the pizzas are pretty big here, 20 inches and they are kind of on the expensive side, 18 for a large and 3 dollars for a slice.  The cheese pizza had come right out of the oven so I got 2 fresh slices.  This pizza wasn't bad, definitely better than the average L.A. slice.  The sauce was sweet with some subtle flavors.  The ratio of cheese to sauce was good, the crust was thin, but a little too much so, it was flopping all over the place with grease dripping out.  Plus it didn't puff up at the end like it should, it was a little flat and dense.  But that being said the crust did have a pretty good taste.

It wasn't really all that memorable, I would say it is one of the closer pizzas to the New York style that I've had out here, however that doesn't make it good.

Plus I feel like Joe's might be better, but I can't say that yet, until I find the damn place.  

2 locations: Santa Monica

     Glendale

Richie Palmer's Pizzeria - 1355 OceanAve. Santa Monica 90401

Price: $$

Overall:

Venice Deli

At work this is our go to place for lunch, they deliver and they are cheap.  The subs are great and so are the calzones.  The pizza however I never had, until now.  They only serve up 2 sizes, medium and small.  Medium is only 12 inches, the small has got to be pretty tiny.  The funny thing is they have a large size for their salads, the large caesar salad is like a party platter size.  It is big enough for about 10 hundred people.  It is ridiculous, especially when you don't know and you order it.  

I got sausage on my pizza this time to make up for the size.  So the pizza is alright.  Thats what I thought on the first bite.  On the second slice I wasn't really feeling it.  Half way through I didn't like it at all.  After my appetite was fulfilled and the pizza got colder it wasn't all that great.  The ingredients were second rate, the cheese seemed to be a mixed bag of shredded, processed, generic stuff.  The sauce was light on some slices, and when you could taste it, it didn't give any flavor.  The crust was pretty crispy and didn't taste all that bad actually, however it was a little too thick and dense to be legit.  It also was very, very tough and chewy.  I got through 3 little slices (by the way, I love when you call the place and ask how big their pizzas are, and they give you the number of slices, which is always 8.  What does the number of slices have to do with the size.  You can cut it into any number you want.  Yeah there were 8 slices, 8 tiny slices.) Anyway 3 slices were enough to satisfy, after that I got tired of it. 

That is actually a pretty good test of how good the pizza is.  If it is a good pizza, every time you have a slice you should want another until you are completely bloated and can't possibly eat anymore.  If every slice, you enjoy less and less, that is obviously not as good pizza.  The more slices that are satisfying the higher the rating.  The best bite of the pizza is the first, no matter how bad the pizza or not hungry you are, that first bite is always good.  If the first bite of the second slice is just as good or better, well then you got yourself a good pizza.

First slice of Venice Deli Pizza = 3.5

Second slice  = 3.3

Third slice =  2.7

I only had 6 of the 8 and the last one I'd say rolled in around a 1.8 or so.  

So sorry to bore you with all this weird math and round about nonsense, I am clearly writing before I think, but whatever.

Venice Deli - 1403 W burbank Blvd 91506

Price: $

Overall: