The Brief

Los Angeles is in the midst of a pizza renaissance.

Pizzaiolos across the city are slicing up unique takes on pies that pull from multiple influences — local, global, and everything in between — just like Los Angeles itself.

It's like when you create a playlist for your friends with all your favorite songs. There’s a little jazz, rock, hip-hop, country, pop.

That’s L.A.-style pizza.

Because the region isn't beholden to any specific standards for pizzas, chefs get to use all the best parts of what makes for a great pie. And, I would argue, that means L.A. is currently making pizza which is better than any other city across the globe.

Fighting talk, I know, but this is a hill I'm willing to die on.

Now, as LAist’s food editor, I’m often asked where to go to get pizza. So I’ve put together a list of my favorite picks. It's clearly not exhaustive, and it's not a list that tells you where to get "the best" pizza. Instead, it's a snapshot of L.A.-style pizza right now — my take on what stands out in terms of creativity and skill.

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#265: It's time for another Food Fridays! And that means Gab Chabrán is hitting the streets with HTLA host Brian De Los Santos to grub on our favorite food: Pizza. L.A. is going through what many artisans are calling a pizza renaissance right now. Hundreds of gourmet pizzerias have popped up around L.A. in recent years, taking advantage of the abundance of fresh produce in the region and marrying uniquely SoCal flavors and influences.

The Case For L.A. Pizza

#265: It's time for another Food Fridays! And that means Gab Chabrán is hitting the streets with HTLA host Brian De Los Santos to grub on our favorite food: Pizza. L.A. is going through what many artisans are calling a pizza renaissance right now. Hundreds of gourmet pizzerias have popped up around L.A. in recent years, taking advantage of the abundance of fresh produce in the region and marrying uniquely SoCal flavors and influences.

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LaSorted’s: Silver Lake

Tommy Brockert was an L.A. event photographer when his then-girlfriend, now wife, gave him an Ooni pizza oven. That led him to enroll in a one-day pizza-making class, where he was hooked and began stumbling down the rabbit hole of crafting his own naturally leavened sourdough pizza crusts.

When his income dried up at the start of the pandemic, he had the crazy idea of selling his homemade pizzas off the front porch of his home in Echo Park.

Tommy and Erin Brockert started selling pizzas during the pandemic. The pizzeria recently have celebrated their four year anniversary.

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Daviston Jeffers @davefotogram

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Courtesy LaSorted's

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It was so successful that he now runs his own pizza shop, LaSorted’s, in Silver Lake, just down the road from where he used to sell his porch pizzas.

A good place to start is the Mamba, prepared as a regular cheese slice or with pepperoni. Its name comes from the late Laker great Kobe Byrant, who once said he ate a pepperoni pizza before scoring 81 points in a single game in 2006. Brockert, who grew up worshiping the Lakers and Dodgers, chose the name.

The Upside Down Mamba is perhaps the most texturally interesting pie on the menu.

The Upside Down Mamba at LaSorted's in Silver Lake. One of the most texturally exciting pizzas in all of Los Angeles.

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Tommy Brocket

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According to Brockert, this style of pizza has roots in Philadelphia, which he learned about from some of his Philly-born employees. The name is exactly what it is: their cheese pizza, with its toppings, flipped, with a three-cheese blend serving as its base, then topped thoroughly with tomato sauce, sprinkled with flaky sea salt, and Sicilian oregano. The thin layer of cooked cheese underneath the sauce forms a buffer between the sauce and the pizza crust, making for a uniquely excellent texture that many West coasters, such as yours, truly haven’t experienced before visiting LaSorted’s.

Another standout is the sausage and pepper pie. It's topped with their housemade sausage mixed with roasted green peppers and onions and then drizzled with spicy tomato Arrabbiata sauce and Calabrian chili oil. This is the pizza version of a sausage and pepper sandwich from an Italian deli.

Think about how a producer takes a snippet of a song and creates a new song based on it. Brockert accomplishes something similar with his pizza—it's both specifically Los Angeles and distinctly his own.

Quarantine Pizza Co: Eastside pop-up

If you've ever visited Smorgasburg LA, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered Quarantine Pizza Co., a pizza pop-up run by Brandon and Carolina Conaway. Like many kids who grew up in Southern California, they draw from various influences, both from their respective cultural backgrounds and a slew of others that they’ve picked up along the way.

Brandon is Asian (Chinese and Vietnamese) and white. Carolina is Latina (Mexican and Colombian). Both grew up in Orange County, where they met before moving to Los Angeles for college.

Brandon and Carolina Conaway of Quarantine Pizza Co. draw from their diverse background to create fun and inventive pizzas at their pop up.

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Robert Haleblian

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Courtesy Quarantine Pizza Co.

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Brandon worked in Italian restaurants, and Carolina has a background in set design for television and film. The couple has been experimenting with sourdough starters since 2015, which they would trade with friends. When the pandemic hit, they started selling pizzas out of their backyard in Highland Park (you may sense a theme here), which is how they came up with the name Quarantine.

It's led to some outstanding combinations, such an Banh Mi pies, Char siu pies, and birria sausage, salsa roja and red corn sourdough.

When you bite into a slice of their sourdough “Neapolitan-ish inspired pizza", its fluffy, airy texture is like a breath of fresh air. It's a revelation. The outer rim of the crust features the perfect amount of “leoparding,” which occurs when the naturally fermented dough is cooked under high heat and creates little dark spots.

The al-pastor pizza is the stuff dreams are made of! A pizza that taste like a taco!

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Courtesy Quarantine Pizza

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I suggest you try the al pastor. The soft crust feels like a thicker-style tortilla because they use Masienda, a single-origin heirloom masa harina infused into the dough. It features sausage from A’s BBQ, topped with sliced pineapple purchased from a local street vendor and salsa verde, onion, and cilantro.

The sausage cups up like pepperoni, pairing exceptionally well with the pineapple's sweetness and the masa in the pizza dough. Each bite contains a rush of freshness.

Yes, that’s right. It's the best of both worlds: pizza and tacos. What a time to be alive in Los Angeles.

Apollonia's Pizza in Mid-City 

The busy entryway to Apollonia's Pizzeria on Wilshire Boulevard.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Justin De Leon, owner and head pizza maker at Apollonia's Pizza, grew up on pizza. His first job was working at a pizza restaurant when he was 13. The modest menu might make you wonder if this is really some of the best pizza in Los Angeles. But you'll quickly understand why after your first bite — or encountering the long lines outside his standing-room only, cash-only pizzeria off Wilshire Boulevard.

De Leon has been a lifelong student who has broken down pizza into its fundamental elements. If you ask what defines his pizza craft, he’ll say his job is to “simplify it.”

“I've challenged myself to create something that I want. Not necessarily what there's a market for.”

I suggest you start with a traditional slice of De Leon's cheese pie. “I was looking for something thin, light, and crispy,” De Leon said. Well, he found it. This is the cheese slice all others should be judged against.

Some of the best pizza you can find in L.A., and it's sold by the slice at Apollonia's Pizzeria on Wilshire Boulevard.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Next, try the square slice, but take a look before taking a bite — notice that crispy, frico cheese crust that rises up on the sides, giving it a 3-D effect. Contrast that with the square slice's light and spacious interior and you'll know why I think this is one of the best in Los Angeles.

De Leon is quick to point out that he doesn’t use specific names, such as Detroit style, Siciliana, or Grandma’s style to describe his pizza. Instead, he likes to think of it as a combination of all of them wrapped into one, as well as his own background and that of his employees: DeLeon is Latino, and many of the staff members he works with at the small pizzeria are Latino.

LAist food editor, Gab Chabran and How To L.A. Host Brain De Los Santos with Apollonia's Pizzeria owner Justin DeLeon

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Aaricka Washington

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LAist

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Listening to De Leon describe his square slice is like listening to an artist talk about their most recent work, which makes sense given his background in photography. He describes it as “graphic” with “a strong visual representation,” stating that the flavor of the slice itself should match the visual.

DeLeon describes L.A.-style pizza as a mixture of various styles, and believes that combination gives it a unique taste.

In his own words, "To me, L.A. pizza is a mix of everything."

California Democrats are targeting a handful of vulnerable GOP state legislators in hopes of flipping their seats blue.

What are their chances? Tuesday’s election results will offer an early clue.

Embattled Republicans from Sacramento to San Diego have drawn a crowded field of Democratic challengers. The primary, where the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party, will decide which Democrats will face off against those GOP incumbents in November.

Democrats in those competitive districts are banking on President Donald Trump’s waning popularity and the impact of his policies — chiefly high tariffs, immigration crackdowns and the war in Iran — to hurt Republicans. To fend off the challenges, GOP incumbents have tried to keep Trump’s name at a distance while appealing to their base of Trump loyalists.

In Riverside County, expect a rematch between Assemblymember Leticia Castillo, a Corona Republican, and Democratic Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, who lost two years ago by a razor-thin margin despite amassing a significant war chest. Tonight’s election will likely foreshadow the results in November, when the two will meet again for a final matchup.

In the Coachella Valley, three Democrats are vying to unseat GOP Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez of Coachella, who has adopted a more moderate perspective on immigration than his fellow Republican colleagues. Similarly, in three other purple districts, from northern Sacramento County to Orange County, tonight’s election will test the Republicans’ popularity.

Democrats are also playing defense in Southern California: Sen. Catherine Blakespear, an Encinitas Democrat, faces Republican challenger Laura Bassett tonight in the toss-up district in San Diego County.

In some of California’s deepest blue corners, Democrats running for open seats are fighting each other to break through. In the coastal Southern California district that includes Malibu and Santa Monica, half a dozen Democrats are vying to succeed Sen. Ben Allen, who is running for insurance commissioner. In Los Angeles, a fierce five-way race has split some of the most powerful labor unions and Democratic groups to replace Democratic Assemblymember Mike Gipson, who will term out by the end of the year.

In San Diego, the race to replace GOP Sen. Brian Jones, who is also terming out, is a battle between two Republican factions that offers a glimpse into the future direction of the party: Will a moderate San Marcos city councilmember endorsed by Jones be more palatable than a far-right firebrand? We’ll find out.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Some elected offices are pit stops. California’s lieutenant governor is one of them.

Voting ends on Tuesday and voters are choosing between an unusually competitive roster of candidates for the No. 2 job in the state, an office few aspire to without one key disclaimer: It’s a step on their way to another job in politics.

The lieutenant governor wields little power beyond stepping in when the governor leaves the state. But it’s been used as a slingshot to the governor’s office before, by Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Gov. Gray Davis, and seeking the office is often a signal that its officeholder has higher political ambitions.

State Treasurer Fiona Ma, Newsom administration official Josh Fryday and former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs are the leading Democratic candidates in a top-two primary that will send two candidates on to the November general election. Fryday, who heads volunteer programs for the state, has amassed the biggest treasure chest — nearly $4 million — and is backed by teachers unions and the governor.

Ma, a longtime politician with deep roots in San Francisco, has endorsements from influential labor unions and has raised about $2.8 million. But her run for the second-highest statewide office is shadowed by 2021 sexual harassment allegations that Tubbs supporters have latched onto. Ma has called the allegation “frivolous”, but the state paid $350,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by one of her former employees.

Tubbs was among the first to announce his campaign in 2024. Once a progressive star, he rose to political stardom 10 years ago as a young big city mayor who piloted a guaranteed income program in Stockton. Ousted by a Republican newcomer, his political career seemed to fade and he went on to lead Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, an advocacy organization. It’s his first crack at public office since then, and he’s garnered support from progressive Democrats and the powerful union SEIU California.

Longtime state lawmaker Gloria Romero is the leading Republican. Romero spent 12 years representing east Los Angeles in the state Legislature as a Democrat. She switched parties in 2024.

Higher education at the forefront

The major Democratic candidates have struggled to set themselves apart on policy. Because the lieutenant governor sits on all three college governing boards, each has claimed they would work to make universities build more housing and lower tuition costs. This has included practical solutions from directing Federal Student Aid applicants to food assistance program CalFresh, to more far-fetched ones such as free tuition for in-demand programs such as nursing.

The lieutenant governor also sits on the commission responsible for millions of acres of public land. Fryday thinks identifying more undeveloped land to build student housing on will help lower tuition costs.

Ma wants Cal State universities, which rely heavily on state funding, to find other revenue sources through partnerships with private companies.

At an April candidate debate in Los Angeles, Tubbs said he supports freezing tuition but did not elaborate on how he would make up the loss in revenue.

Romero seeks greater transparency about faculty, salaries and housing allowances and would push for more student representation on the UC Board of Regents.

To set themselves apart, the Democrats have leaned on their distinct backgrounds. Fryday has made clean energy a core part of his campaign as a former executive of a clean energy organization started by billionaire gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer. Ma has framed the job as another bulwark against the Trump administration. Tubbs, who works as an unpaid economic adviser to Newsom, has focused on affordability and cutting tuition for low-income families.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A quiet primary race for state superintendent of public instruction is winding down Tuesday, with no clear front-runner emerging from a wide field of well-qualified candidates for California’s top schools job.

Ten candidates — including several legislative veterans — are vying for the opportunity to oversee the state’s 10,000 public K-12 schools during a tumultuous time. Schools are grappling with AI in the classroom, budget uncertainty, declining enrollment, lackluster test scores and other challenges.

The job itself is also up in the air. Gov. Gavin Newsom in January proposed an overhaul of California’s school governance structure, with far fewer duties for the superintendent. Instead, the State Board of Education, an 11-member body appointed by the governor, and a newly appointed education commissioner would hold most of the decision-making power. The superintendent would act as more of a policy advocate.

The shift would streamline a cumbersome and often opaque bureaucracy, adding transparency and accountability, Newsom said. It would also align California with most other states. Candidates for the superintendent position blasted the proposal, saying it takes away power from voters and concentrates too much control with the governor’s office.

Newsom and the current superintendent, Tony Thurmond, are both termed out this year.

Charter schools are no longer a divisive issue

The race for superintendent — at times, in previous election cycles, one of the most expensive and contentious races on the ballot — has been unusually quiet this year. In the most recent poll, conducted in April, no candidate garnered more than 10% of voters’ support, and 32% of voters were undecided. As of last week, no candidate had raised more than a few hundred thousand dollars. That’s in contrast to the 2018 superintendent race between Thurmond and Marshall Tuck, a former charter school executive, which generated more than $50 million in donations.

But there have been a few surprises in the race. The California Teachers Association and its historic nemesis, the California Charter Schools Association, endorsed the same candidate: Richard Barrera, a San Diego Unified school board member who was little known outside San Diego until this year. Both groups cited his accomplishments on the school board and his commitment to public education.

The dual endorsement shows how much has changed in education debates. For the past two decades, charter schools have been the No. 1 division in the superintendent’s race, generating millions in campaign donations from both sides. This year the subject has barely been mentioned, probably because charter school enrollment appears to have plateaued and both types of schools are now dealing with the same issues.

Another surprise has been the popularity of Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified school board. Shaw made headlines in 2023 when she took on Thurmond over the privacy rights of transgender students, and has made anti-LGBTQ policies the focus of her campaign. In the April poll, she was tied with Barrera.

Other top candidates include: Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, former head of the Assembly education committee; Josh Newman, former head of the Senate education committee; Anthony Rendon, former speaker of the Assembly and a longtime early education program administrator; Nichelle Henderson, a Los Angeles Community College District board member, and Ainye Long, a teacher in San Francisco Unified.

The nonpartisan position pays $210,460 a year.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Californians finish voting Tuesday for who they think can best tackle one of the toughest jobs in the state: insurance commissioner.

The commissioner is responsible for regulating the nation’s largest property insurance market that includes home and auto, plus health, pet, ride-hailing and life insurance, as well as workers’ compensation.

But the hot topic in the past few years as wildfire risk has increased has been home and fire insurance. The next commissioner will face many challenges that include trying to balance property insurance availability with affordability. Some insurance companies that had stopped renewing policies or writing new ones in the past few years are now taking advantage of new regulations that allow them to use new tools in setting their rates. This generally means premiums will rise as the Insurance Department, headed by the commissioner, is likely to keep approving increases in homeowners’ insurance premiums.

The new commissioner will also have to deal with the aftermath of last year’s Los Angeles County fires. Insurance-claim delays and denials are a key part of the slow pace of rebuilding and recovery. State Farm, California’s largest individual insurer, and the FAIR Plan, the state-mandated fire insurance provider of last resort, are both facing lawsuits from homeowners and legal action from the insurance department over their handling of claims from those fires.

The leading Democratic candidates are state Sen. Ben Allen, who will be termed out of the Legislature; Jane Kim, head of the California Working Families Party who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; Patrick Wolff, a financial analyst who has never held public office; and Steven Bradford, the former state senator and assemblymember. Neither of the leading Republican candidates has held statewide public office, either: Stacy Korsgaden, a longtime insurance agent, and Merritt Farren, an attorney who lost his home in the Palisades fire last year.

The candidates CalMatters interviewed mostly agreed on the problems that need to be tackled but proposed different solutions. A few of them have called for increased financial involvement by the state: Kim wants to establish a state authority for wildfires and floods funded by a portion of policyholders’ premiums. Farren wants to create a state reinsurance authority funded by a fee insurers charge their policyholders, something both Kim and Allen have expressed interest in. Bradford said he would study a public-private partnership to help keep insurers writing policies in California.

Consumer advocacy groups and former insurance commissioners say the job is complicated and involves a “brutal balancing act” that takes into account the needs of homeowners, business owners, landlords and renters while keeping insurance companies confident that the rates they’re charging match the growing risk of wildfires in the state.

U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, the Democratic congressman whose district includes much of Contra Costa and Solano counties, was the state’s first insurance commissioner and held the position two different times. He told CalMatters that the commissioner job is “complex, hard, detailed work.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.