Visited Pizzeria Mozza - L.A.

I finally had a chance to go to Pizzeria Mozza in LA last weekend for a lunch variety of pizza. It's truly a wood-oven pizzeria, as pictured below. It's one of the 50 or so VPN-certified pizzerias in the U.S.

My wife and I had three pizzas. Two are pictured here -- at top, the zucchini flowers with burrata. Zucchini flowers are much more popular as a pizza topping (and in general) in Italy. This pizza had a little tomato sauce, topped with the cool burrata after it came out of the oven. The flavors, the hot and the cool creamy cheese... fantastic. 

The second pizza below was the Fennel sausage, panna, red onion & scallions. The fennel sausage had a great flavor and crumbly texture (they were rather large chunks). The scallions added a nice touch to the thinly-sliced red onion. Another winner.

Finally, we have another white pizza, the Bianca with fontina, mozzarella, sottocenere & sage.  This was certainly good, but didn't live up to the other two. Sage is an underrated pizza topping.

Their menu:

My general high-level review:

• Ambiance: B.  Great display of the oven (somewhat blocked by customers dining at the counter). The tables are REALLY packed in tight and the place gets loud. You'd better hope you appreciate your dining neighbors.
• Pizza Toppings: A. Really creative toppings, well executed.
• Pizza Crust: B-. This was my biggest disappointment. What I want in wood burning pizza is white crust with black charring or spotting. This crust was too consistently browned and the crust was brittle in spots. My guess is that the oven was running cool and they had to leave the pizzas in longer than normal. 

Overall, I'd give Mozza a B+. It's not close to Pizzeria Bianco and I'd even say that Olivella's in Dallas beats Mozza in terms of the crust. My backyard crust generally comes out better too...