The dough is barely blistered, the bubbles just singed. The pizzas crunch with every bite, especially the chewy inner crust. There's pop-punk blaring from the speakers, there are clams on the pizzas, and there may or may not be cheese, which can only mean one thing: Ozzy's Apizza (pronounced “abeetz”) has finally opened its first standalone location in years. of pop-up windows.
It offers the only true brick-and-mortar restaurant in Los Angeles dedicated to New Haven-style pizza. But to build it, founder Chris Wallace had to wade through sobriety, nostalgia and bureaucracy, and give up one signature feature: charcoal ovens, which are illegal in restaurants across the city.
“I always wondered why New Haven pizza was never here — everyone is so into coal,” he said. “But here's the secret: Not all New Haven pizzerias use charcoal. Zuppardi's, which is one of my favorites, uses Bakers Pride gas ovens. They have never used a charcoal oven a day in their lives. So I thought, 'Okay, if they can do it, why can't I?'”
Founder Chris Wallace started Ozzy's Apizza in his apartment. Now he's forming and pouring dough by hand at his pizzeria.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Wallace cold-ferments his dough for 72 hours and uses a gas brick oven, where an open flame is the key: it allows Ozzy's to produce pizzas with the required New Haven-style char, with a crispy but still chewy crust that stops just shy of burnt.
According to Wallace, straddling the line between charred and barely burned requires all the senses, but chief among them is smell. After enough time making enough New Haven-style pizza, it's all muscle memory; On a tour of the famous Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napolitana two years ago, the Pepe family told Wallace: “We just know. We're sorry”.
The new Ozzy's Apizza, dominated by a mural of its namesake, Wallace's chihuahua-terrier mix, serves pepperoni, cheese and sausage pies, plus salad, cheesy garlic bread and Italian ice, but the two pizzas in the that Wallace is most proud of are the most faithful to the style.
Liotta Tomato Pie pays homage to the late actor Ray Liotta and Frank Pepe's famous cheeseless pizza: At Ozzy's, the star is a thick, oregano-rich layer of California-grown crushed Stanislaus tomato sauce, with so much served that The outer layer of the sauce almost tastes toasted. Ozzy's other quintessential New Haven-style pie is the You're Welcome, a clam pizza cooked with bivalve juice on the crust, ensuring the Rhode Island clams retain moisture and marine flavor along with oil. olive, garlic and oregano.
“I've been dying to come here,” said first-time Ozzy customer Zak Tarkhan during a visit Sunday night. “Nothing is going to beat the style of New Haven, Connecticut. Nothing can beat that coal. “It has its own unique flavor.”
Tarkhan, a New Haven native, said he found another place, Urbn Pizza, with locations in San Diego and a weekly pop-up in Smorgasburg LA, serving solid New Haven-style pizza. Fortunately, he said, Ozzy's is more convenient and authentic.
“Oh, it's so damn good,” Tarkhan said after his first bite. “I could eat all of this right now.”
The cheeseless tomato pie, Liotta, is a nod to the original spicy pie served at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Wallace grew up on the border of East Haven and New Haven, with easy access to “great pizza on every corner.” The Ozzy founder lost his mother when he was 19, and while struggling with his business, he questions why he opened a pizzeria. The answer isn't simply bringing Connecticut-style pizza to Los Angeles. It's reliving your childhood, like family nights at Aniello's or the pop-punk of your adolescence. But he didn't always know he wanted to open a pizzeria.
Wallace moved to California a decade ago and needed a job while he pursued stand-up comedy.
“The funny thing is, I thought that was my dream, but it ended up being my dream,” he said.
He Googled “pizza” and found a Mod Pizza outpost in Irvine, and then moved to a new location in North Hollywood, which would one day become the home of his future restaurant. He hosted open mic nights on the patio to combine his two loves. When work ended and COVID hit, he began to dive into sobriety and quickly realized he would need a hobby during lockdown. Wallace turned to pizza again, this time focusing on developing his own recipes.
He modified his home oven and added heavy baking steels to replicate a professional deck oven. He heated it to 550 degrees and rotated the pies on two racks as they baked, making sure the New Haven was charred into each crust.
Dinners with neighbors turned into small batches of pop-ups, where the new pizzaiolo removed his smoke detector and opened all the windows. She sold 20 pies each weekend, and Ozzy licked crumbs off the floor and greeted guests as they picked up their orders.
When someone called the health department, he began showing up at local bars and hired his friend Craig Taylor as a business partner. They made the dough, sauce and toppings in Wallace's apartment and loaded them into the trunk of his Dodge Challenger, transported them to local patios and cooked them in a small portable pizza oven until 2022, when a friend who now ran The Underdogs sports bar offered use of the kitchen: Ozzy's first semi-permanent home.
Wallace named his pizzeria after his chihuahua-terrier mix, Ozzy, who now dominates the North Hollywood restaurant in a giant mural.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
“I hadn't had any fun being sober yet because I was still learning about myself,” Wallace said. “That was the most fun, and still is: I could just be myself, listen to music in the back and get dirty.”
He began meeting and leaning on the Los Angeles pizza community for advice, friendship, and guidance from the teams behind Danny Boy, Hot Tongue, Gorilla Pies, and more. When Underdogs changed hands, the owners offered Wallace and Taylor another space: their Glen Arden Club in Glendale, where Ozzy's has operated since the summer of 2023 and will be until October 31.
While he was there, a January review by Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy blew up Ozzy's spot. The media mogul with a pizza review column rated Ozzy's an 8.1 out of 10, then called it “excellent” and raised it to “8.3, 8.4.”
“Overnight, we went from a patio pop-up to Dave naming us the best pizza in L.A. and then all the influencers in L.A. show up,” Wallace said. “I had to expand my business from six people to 20, we had to get a bigger mixer.”
They had the opportunity to launch an outpost in New Haven and took it, but what Wallace and Taylor really needed was their own restaurant space in Los Angeles. Earlier this year, they found it.
When the duo took over the former 2,100-square-foot Mod Pizza, they added the large mural of Ozzy eating pepperoni pizza. They had painted on one wall “charred, not burned.” They envision the return of open mic nights and building a venue for local musicians and artists.
“What I want to do is make this the home I never had when I was going through all my stuff,” Wallace said. “I can make this a community thing.”
Beer and wine could be added, or even sandwiches to go, given the proximity to the Metro station. And, of course, there will be more pizza, charred, not burnt.
Ozzy's Apizza is located at 5300 Lankershim Blvd., Suite 103, in North Hollywood and is open Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 10 p.m.
