LA's most inventive pizza makers convene this weekend at Pizza City Fest

This weekend, pizza lovers will make a pilgrimage to Pizza City Fest at L.A. Live, where scores of local pizza makers will serve all-you-can-eat slices to worshipful fans.

For $125 on Saturday and $115 on Sunday, you’ll get to try eclectic styles and toppings, many only-in-L.A., along with sides, desserts, an open bar and demos and panel discussions.

It’s all personally curated by festival founder Steve Dolinsky, aka “The Food Guy,” a 13-time James Beard-winning reporter who hosts a weekly Thursday night news segment on NBC Chicago. Now moonlighting as a pizza impresario, he started the festival in his hometown; it’s in its third year in L.A.

Steve Dolinsky, founder of Pizza City Fest

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Courtesy Pizza City Fest

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“L.A. is a pizza city. Ten years ago, that wasn’t the case," Dolinsky said. "But since the pandemic, a lot of people have pivoted to pizza. So we saw this as an opportunity to spread the word and share the good pizza that’s been out there.”

Some notable L.A. trends he’s noticed are the ubiquity of ranch, the presence of soft-serve ice cream, and “everywhere seems to have a chocolate chip cookie.” Dolinsky doesn’t think there’s necessarily a unified style of pizza in Los Angeles, but since everyone seems to have a truck carting around pizza ovens, “you end up with a lot of Neapolitan-style with leopard spotting.”

We talked to six pizza makers who will be at the fest and discovered what kind of slices they will be serving.

Naughty Pie Nature: “The Cosmo”

The Cosmo, inspired by orecchiette pasta from Naughty Pie Nature in Echo Park

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Courtesy Naughty Pie Nature

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Bronwen Kinzler-Britton got her start in pizza as a line cook at Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She moved to L.A. during the pandemic and met fellow chef Jose Ibarra while cooking at Etta in Culver City. They started doing pop-ups in spring of 2023, and in January 2024 they opened Naughty Pie Nature on Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park.

Kinzler-Britton describes their pizza as “Neapolitan style, with a simple recipe: 00 flour, salt, yeast and water.” Their best-seller at the restaurant is pepperoni, but “we want to flex our food muscle, and get antsy if it’s just pepperoni,” so they’ve come up with recipes like “The Cosmo,” inspired by orecchiette pasta, which they’ll be serving on Sunday.

It’s “crushed tomatoes, mozzarella, Italian sausage, broccolini, confit garlic, parmesan, and finished with Calabrian chili,” she says. “But there’s no pasta in it.”

They are prepping 1,300 mini slices for the event.

During the wildfires, they joined more than 25 other pizzerias to form the L.A. Pizza Alliance, started by David Turkell, aka LOL Caesars on Instagram, a much-followed online pizza “community organizer.” The pizza makers worked long shifts to feed Angelenos displaced by the fires and first-responders protecting the city.

“We were donating as much as we could, and gave out free pies as people came in,” says Kinzler-Britton.

Ultimately, according to Turkell, the Alliance served over 100,000 slices.

Ozzy’s Apizza: “The Liotta”

A "Liotta" pizza from Ozzy's Apizza is made with their classic red sauce, olive oil, and parmesan cheese.

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Julie Leopo

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LAist

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Chris Wallace of Ozzy’s in North Hollywood has seen firsthand how a quality product can deliver viral traffic and put a newcomer on the map. When Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports visited and said it was the best pizza he’d had in L.A., Wallace says their sales quadrupled — and have not let up since.

It’s all the more unexpected because the pizzeria serves New Haven-style pizza, simple thin-crust tomato pies with a sparing (if at all) use of mozzarella, brought to the East Coast city by Italian immigrants. (For more on New Haven-style, read LAist’s recent story.)

On Sunday, Ozzy’s will serve up slices of their classic pie, “The Liotta.”

“It’s our staple red and black thing, made with red sauce, olive oil, and parm,” says Wallace. It’s highly adaptable to all tastes — one reason they’re bringing it to the fest is because “it’s easy to make vegan without the parmesan.”

Hot Tongue: “The best plain slice in L.A."

"Best plain slice in Los Angeles", made with naturally leavened dough and topped with California tomatoes and low-moisture mozzarella.

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Courtesy Hot Tongue

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On Saturday, Alex Koons from Hot Tongue will keep it simple yet refined. "We are bringing the best plain slice in Los Angeles," he says. Naturally leavened dough made with stone-milled organic grain from Washington is fermented for three days and topped with California tomatoes and low-moisture mozzarella.

"It's simple on paper, complex in flavor," he says. "The hardest slice to execute, with nothing to hide behind, balanced, light and satisfying.”

Triple Beam: “Tomato Confit Pie”

Triple Beam pizza

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Also on Saturday, Triple Beam will serve squares of its 3.5-foot-long Roman-style “Tomato Confit” pie, a crowd favorite. Cherry tomatoes are lightly salted and slow-roasted in extra virgin olive oil with basil, pine nuts and garlic.

MexiForno: “Tijuana-style Al Pastor”

MexiForno will be serving its taco inspired pizzas

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Courtesy Pizza City Fest

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Chef Marcos Buenrostro and Marilin Jimenez make Mexican-inspired pizzas out of their home in Guadalupe, a town in northern Santa Barbara County not far from the foodie enclaves of Los Alamos and Orcutt.

Everything they serve could just as easily be a taco. “We’re just trying to infuse our traditional recipes into Neapolitan style pizza”, says Buenrostro. “We've got surf and turf tacos, carne asada tacos, birria tacos — you literally just swap tortillas for crust.”

For now, they’re happy to be slinging pies at home. “We’ve considered opening a brick-and-mortar, but why would we waste three or four grand? We honestly get more traffic than the restaurants at our house,” he says.

At the Fest they’ll offer up their “Tijuana-style Al Pastor Pizza”, a Neapolitan wood-fired pizza, with a green tomatillo salsa base, pickled red onions, radishes, piped guacamole, fresh pineapple and al pastor meat. Buenrostro says he’ll be cutting that directly from the trompo.

Miller-Butler: “The Simple Pleasure”

The Simple Pleasure, from Miller-Butler

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Courtesy Miller-Butler

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Miller-Butler, San Pedro’s mobile pizzeria pop-up, will be handing out slices on Sunday. It’s a project by husband-and-wife duo Jillana Miller and Ahmad Butler.

They started experimenting with pizza during the pandemic in early 2020, quickly growing a following in the Harbor area.

They’ve created tons of unique pies, including a Jamaican jerk pizza, a crispy pork banh mi pizza, a birria pizza and a miso pizza which was inspired by a customer. “A sweet Japanese woman who makes artisan miso brought us a jar,” says Miller. “The miso quality was insane — we turned it into a white miso sauce, with Parmesan, which marries well together.”

At the fest Miller says they’ll be cooking up their crowd-pleaser “The Simple Pleasure.”

“It’s a light garlic cream, under our mozzarella/provolone cheese blend, with spinach, thinly sliced tomatoes, and after the oven we add basil, olive oil and our signature sofrito spice blend.”

They currently operate a full-service catering business out of Partake Collective in Long Beach, and are planning to open their first brick-and-mortar store as part of the first phase of West Harbor, the massive 42-acre San Pedro waterfront redevelopment project.