 A California Club pizza | |
| Alternative names | California pizza |
|---|---|
| Type | Pizza |
| Place of origin | United States |
| Region or state | California |
| Created by | Ed LaDou andAlice Waters |
| Main ingredients | Pizza dough,cheese |
California-style pizza (also known asCalifornia pizza) is a style ofpizza that combinesNew York andItalian thincrust with toppings from theCalifornia cuisine cooking style. Its invention is generally attributed to chefEd LaDou, andChez Panisse, inBerkeley, California.Wolfgang Puck, after meeting LaDou, popularized the style of pizza in the rest of the country.[1] It is served in many California cuisine restaurants.California Pizza Kitchen,Round Table Pizza, andExtreme Pizza, are major pizzafranchises associated with California-style pizza.
The California-style pizza was invented more or less simultaneously in 1980 byEd LaDou (the "Prince of Pizza"), then working as a pizza chef for Spectrum Foods' Prego Restaurant inSan Francisco'sCow Hollow neighborhood,[2] and by pizza chefs working forAlice Waters at theChez Panisse Cafe inBerkeley, California.[3]
LaDou had learned pizza-making in the 1970s as a teenager at Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too, a traditional New York–style pizzeria inMountain View, California.[4] He made pizzas briefly at Ecco, an upscale restaurant at theHyatt Hotel inPalo Alto, California,[5] before starting at Prego.
Although Prego specialized in classic, Italian-style thin-crust pizzas, its chefs encouraged LaDou to experiment withprosciutto,goat cheese, andtruffles in theirwood-burning oven, and send his results to guests.[4][5] At one table, the guest to whom he served an off-menu invention involvingmustard,ricotta,pâté, andred pepper turned out to be chefWolfgang Puck.
By 1980, Alice Waters' Chez Panisse and its head chef,Jeremiah Tower, had already inventedCalifornia cuisine, a combination ofFrench andItalian techniques and presentation with fresh local ingredient-focused flavors. Waters was a long-time fan of Tommaso's Italian restaurant in San Francisco'sNorth Beach, which had installed theWest Coast's first wood-fired pizza oven when it opened in 1935.[6]
After traveling to Italy, Waters decided to make an openkitchen featuring a Tommaso's-style pizza oven the focus of the new cafe she was opening above her main dining room. Although prepared classically, her chefs added exotic fine ingredients to their single-serving pizzas andcalzones, such asgoat cheese and duck sausage.[3] Her cafe, and its pizzas, in particular, were an instant success, attracting wide attention among food critics.[7][8]
Wolfgang Puck, in 1980 and 1981, was preparing to open the restaurant that would make him famous,Spago, inWest Hollywood, California. Initially conceived as apizzeria, Spago's was modeled after the upstairs cafe at Chez Panisse.[3][9] He was so impressed with the pizza LaDou had made for him at Prego, he hired LaDou as head pizza chef. Under Puck's guidance, LaDou developed more than 250 pizza concepts using ingredients such as scallops,roe, and babyzucchini flowers.[5]
Among their most famous invention was "Jewish pizza", a pizza dough first cooked then topped withsmoked salmon,crème fraîche,capers, anddill.[10] Another innovation was using infusedolive oil, baby vegetables,chili oil, and flavored dough.[4]
In 1985, LaDou helped two inexperienced lawyer-restaurateurs, Richard L. Rosenfeld and Larry S. Flax, start a new restaurant concept,California Pizza Kitchen (also known as "CPK"). He brought them many of Spago's recipes, which he had carefully saved.[5]
The new restaurant borrowed the concept of open kitchens centered around wood-burning pizza ovens from Spago, but instead of exotic gourmet ingredients, it used innovative but simplercomfort food toppings.[5][11] When the new restaurant's chef quit less than a month before opening, LaDou quickly designed and cooked an entire menu, inventing barbecue chicken pizza on the spot.[4] LaDou also helped develop pizza menus for Sammy's Woodfired Pizza and theHard Rock Cafe.[4]
Both Wolfgang Puck and California Pizza Kitchen were instrumental in turning California-style pizza from agourmet food trend to a mass consumer food product. Based on the success of his pizzas and his status as acelebrity chef, Puck opened a series of restaurants, ranging from high-end clones of Spago to convenience chains for airports and mallfood courts. California Pizza Kitchen grew to 200 outlets. Both introduced frozen pizzas, but after an early success Puck's supermarket lines were overtaken by CPK's, which are backed byKraft Foods.[12]
