Stella Rossa in The Feast
A new pizzeria has quietly opened next door to M Street Kitchen (formerly La Grande Orange) on Main Street. Owned by the same company, Chicago based Lettuce Entertain You, we figured this was just another run-in-mill eatery until we met the Chef and co-owner Jeff Mahin, and tried the pies.
Chef Mahin was a chemistry student at Berkley when he got the chance to work outside of London at the English temple of molecular gastronomy - The Fat Duck. After a year in the kitchen with owner-chef Heston Blumenthal, he did a short stint at three-starred Michelin Arzak in San Sebastian, Spain, and later helped open a Japanese eatery in Mexico City, Nara. Three days before the young chef was about to embark on a career with Grant Achatz at Alinea in Chicago, he took the job with Lettuce Entertain You which eventually landed Mahin his first restaurant in California.
With such an impressive background, we wonder why Mahin went the pizza route. “Heston (Blumenthal) taught me how to think about food in a different way. He was never satisfied to just put something on the menu, but always challenging us to make it better. I spent six months on one caramel,” says Mahin. “Snazzy food was just not good enough. He showed me how hard it was do truly simple food, but also how to accept food and keep pushing.”
Carrying on the tradition, Mahin worked on this pizza dough for a year before he was satisfied. The wheat comes from an artisanal miller in the San Jaoquin Valley and is not cooked traditionally in a 900 degree oven. “We don’t need a wood oven for our pizza,” explains Mahin, “The Baker’s Pride oven works best for what we are doing here.” The approach might be modest but the purple kale pizza is one of the best new ideas we’ve tried this year. To see other standouts, such as the burratta with grilled grapes, watch our slideshow.
Chef Mahin was a chemistry student at Berkley when he got the chance to work outside of London at the English temple of molecular gastronomy - The Fat Duck. After a year in the kitchen with owner-chef Heston Blumenthal, he did a short stint at three-starred Michelin Arzak in San Sebastian, Spain, and later helped open a Japanese eatery in Mexico City, Nara. Three days before the young chef was about to embark on a career with Grant Achatz at Alinea in Chicago, he took the job with Lettuce Entertain You which eventually landed Mahin his first restaurant in California.
With such an impressive background, we wonder why Mahin went the pizza route. “Heston (Blumenthal) taught me how to think about food in a different way. He was never satisfied to just put something on the menu, but always challenging us to make it better. I spent six months on one caramel,” says Mahin. “Snazzy food was just not good enough. He showed me how hard it was do truly simple food, but also how to accept food and keep pushing.”
Carrying on the tradition, Mahin worked on this pizza dough for a year before he was satisfied. The wheat comes from an artisanal miller in the San Jaoquin Valley and is not cooked traditionally in a 900 degree oven. “We don’t need a wood oven for our pizza,” explains Mahin, “The Baker’s Pride oven works best for what we are doing here.” The approach might be modest but the purple kale pizza is one of the best new ideas we’ve tried this year. To see other standouts, such as the burratta with grilled grapes, watch our slideshow.
The Feast LA (June 17, 2011)