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Some Pizza Mind
While it's no secret just about every type of food can be found around Los Angeles in the most inspired, sophisticated, artful and authentic forms, truly great pizza can't really be enjoyed until you hit the headed east 10 and get to...Phoenix. Hence this take by David Shaw in the LA Times (now CalendarLive login-free) on the state of local pizza rings completely true.
Most of what is called "pizza" is round thin bread topped with cloying tomato sauce and waxy cheese, just like what passes for a "bagel" in L.A. is more often than not a round roll with a hole in the middle. When the supremely knowledgeable, contagiously enthusiastic Ed Levine declares California to be generally "a lousy pizza state," things really are that bad.
Sure, we've got VPN-certified Antica Pizzeria and superb Margherita pies at Angeli Caffé. (Some of us, however, will never quite understand the fuss over the pizza at Casa Bianca, the great-for-other-reasons Eagle Rock community landmark.)
So the dearth continues, about which Shaw sheds some insightful perspective. Thankfully he also reminds the local pizza-craving multitudes there's a glimmer of hope. But until it materialzes, we give up.
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