Jonathan Gold willingly waits in line for hours at Pizzana, where Neapolitan pizza goes L.A.

Chef Daniele Uditi explains his “neo-Neapolitan” pizza style at Pizzana.

June 16, 2017 9:20 AM PT

Restaurant Critic

Pizza, as every New Yorker is fond of telling you, is the food of the people; cheap, tasty sustenance sold by the slice. But in Los Angeles, pizza has another dimension, as anyone who has ever considered dropping six grand on a custom pizza oven can attest — in certain circles a wood-burning Italian-made behemoth is as necessary as a fire pit or a screening room. Famous pizza virtuosi make regular stops at the homes of talk show hosts and sitcom auteurs, who know that a perfectly made Margherita is worth its weight in osetra caviar. Pizza is also the food of the rich.

Daniele Uditi, chef of the chic Brentwood pizzeria Pizzana, earned his bones at his family’s bakery near Caserta, the buffalo mozzarella capital of Italy, and in Naples, home of modern pizza, before he moved to Los Angeles. He probably became well known when actor Chris O’Donnell rescued him from a dead-end restaurant job and hired him to cook for him and his friends. Uditi’s pizza was a poorly kept secret, even among a lot of people who don’t run in Hollywood circles — he was regularly touted as a celebrity chef in Italian newspapers. So it became almost inevitable that he end up with a Brentwood restaurant of his own, in partnership with O’Donnell, wife Caroline O’Donnell, and Candace and Charles Nelson of Sprinkles Cupcakes.

People line up for hours outside Pizzana’s blue, tiled dining room, gazing wistfully at the great, domed oven, passing the time with frozen yogurt, acai nibbles, or the other options on the block. Once they finally get to a table, there are nicely realized versions of the fried things you might expect in Naples — crisply fried zucchini blossoms, plates of fried baby artichokes cascading over charred, wood-roasted hearts — as well as roasted meatballs, or billows of lovely, soft chicken liver pâté served with sweet tomato jam. The croutons for the little gem Caesar salad are baked to order in the pizza oven. The shaved Brussels sprout salad holds as many toasted pistachio nuts as it does leaves.

Does Uditi have a signature pizza? Not officially, although I’m guessing that it will end up being the Neo-Margherita, a take on the Neapolitan classic. There is rather a lot of cheese on a Neo-Margherita, a bit of oil, and a layer of San Marzano tomatoes cooked down to a dense slurry. (Uditi imports the San Marzanos himself.) The top of the pizza is dusted with a green flurry of toasted breadcrumbs infused with herbs. When you bite into the pizza — unlike the last Margherita pizza you had, this one is stiff enough to pick up with your hands — there is a crackle, a crunch, and a blast of fresh basil, that licoricey greenness that never quite comes through from a single raw leaf, right before the caramelized tomato acidity kicks in.

Does it resemble in some ways the modernized Margherita made famous by Franco Pepe, whose pizzeria in Caiazzo, north of Naples, is considered by some people (including me) to be the best in the world? It does, although Pepe’s pizza achieves its effect through stripes of concentrated sauces on a layer of cheese, and gives an impression of lushness rather than herbal intensity.

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Daniele Uditi, a celebrity of L.A. pizza, is baking at the new Pizzana in Brentwood. This is the aglio olio pizza.