California Pizza Kitchen

As I've gotten older, my favorite kind of pizza is cheese pizza. And increasingly I like vanilla ice cream--especially if it's premium vanilla. I'm not sure what this says about me. But I'm warming up to the idea of exotic toppings on pizza. When you're talking exotic toppings, you're talking California-style pizza.

For a long time here in Utah the only pizza you could get that was really "California style" was Canadian bacon (or usually regular old ham) with pineapple. (Some people call this "Hawaiian pizza," but it doesn't come from Hawaii. (Some claim that Britain's Pizza Express invented Hawaiian pizza, but this seems unlikely.) The Brick Oven serves my favorite version of this this sliced almonds. Now you can get the real taste of California pizza at California Pizza Kitchen at the University Mall. There are also stores at the Gateway and SLC Airport. (The Brick Oven obviously shows the influence of CA pizza.)

You should know that "California" pizza is an oxymoron to pizza lovers in Chicago and New York (who believe that they have the only true pizza). But it has a legitimate pizza heritage. Like NY pizza, CA style is a thin crust pizza, so it traces its heritage back to Naples. Also, like NY pizza, CA pizza is a soft, tender crust (unlike true Neapolitan pizza, which is crisp like a cracker. You can get Neapolitan style at CPK.) Unlike NY pizza, CA pizza isn't floppy, and at least the usual CPK pizza doesn't look authentically hand tossed, but these gourmet pizzas are usually pretty small. They look rolled to me.

Pretty much all California-style cuisine traces its genealogy to Alice Waters and her legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA. Waters was a fan of Tommaso's Italian restaurant in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. She combined Tommasos ideas with her own ideas gathered from Italy and her own vision of California cuisine to create a unique style of pizza. (Imagine pizza with local organic goat cheese, fresh, handmade duck sausage, and local, organic arugula.)

At the same time Ed LaDou ("the Prince of Pizza") was experimenting with exotic pizza recipes at Prego Restaurante, also in San Francisco (Cow Hollow neighborhood). This Bay Area contribution to pizza went Hollywood when Wolfgang Puck, inspired by Alice Waters, opened Spago, a trendy Beverly Hills restaurant that provided pizza for the stars and turned Puck into one of the first celebrity chefs. Puck brought LaDou into his pizza kitchen, and between the two of them, they turned out over 250 varieties of pizza. LaDou later helped develop pizza menus for CPK, Sammy's Woodfired Pizza (currently only in CA and NV), and Hard Rock Cafe (you'll find one at Trolley Square).

Sure CPK is a chain, but it has a Bacon number of two connecting it to legendary North Beach pizza and Alice Waters. Consider it a "poor person's" trip to Spago (relatively "poor" that is, CPK pizza is about $12 for an 11" pizza).

Most of my experience with CPK has been while I'm traveling. I've had the Thai Chicken pizza at both LAX and Reagan National (and probably a couple of other places I forget). That's become my favorite. Just Saturday night I tried a new variety: mango with curry sauce.