One of my favorite new places for pizza in Los Angeles is a wooden table in a corner of the back patio of a coffee shop off Pico Boulevard started by a former management consultant who was briefly a vegan.
Talking about pop-ups in L.A. can invoke a sort of ridiculous but all-too-familiar discussion particular to Californians. (Remember that “Saturday Night Live” skit that mocked our insistence on sharing driving routes complete with freeways and exits in every conversation?)
I felt like a Californian trying to describe my recent pop-up restaurant visits to a friend: I ordered over Instagram DM, paid via Zelle and then I met the chef in the Albertson’s parking lot in Tujunga under the big sign across from the In-N-Out. He told me to look for the black Mini Cooper with a red stripe.
That pizza I brought over for dinner on Saturday with the 25% whole-grain crust? I ordered it over email, paid via Venmo and picked it up from that bagel shop in Silver Lake. The pizza chef, who worked on the culinary department for a bunch of Food Network cooking shows, is friends with the bagel shop owner. You get the idea.
But with limited availability, online preorders, precise pick-up instructions and a little mystery built in, comes great reward.
Mievè
Mievè, pronounced “mee-vay,” sets up shop in the back corner of Kiff Kafe coffee shop and restaurant in West Los Angeles Wednesday through Saturday evenings. Park in the cafe’s lot, under the monstrous mural of two round-bellied, blue-haired characters sipping coffee, walk to the back of the patio and look for the chalkboard sign advertising pizza.
It’s a bare bones operation, with a small team led by Amirali Ghasemipour, a former management consultant who left his corporate job last summer to sling pizzas.
He makes three varieties at a time and changes the offerings weekly. He bakes the pizza in four scuffed and dented silver countertop pizza ovens he sets up on the patio.
“It may look like Sicilian, but it’s our own thing,” Ghasemipour says. “It’s pan pizza.”
I order one of each slice and wait for my pepperoni, lasagna and zucchini pies on one of the wooden folding chairs on the patio. Across from me is a woman on a Zoom meeting. Most of the people on the patio are sipping coffee and working on laptops, oblivious of the pizza operation in the corner.
I watch as one of the chefs takes a blowtorch to a pile of shishito peppers on a silver tray. He sprinkles the now blackened green rounds onto a slice of pepperoni pizza then makes it rain ultra fine shavings of Grana Padano over the top. He covers the entire surface and some of the paper plate underneath.
The pepperoni is a variation on the hot honey, dollops of milky or creamy cheese and pepperoni pizza you can now find at pizzerias around the country. Ghasemipour adds a garlic-tinged ricotta, the shishitos and chipotle honey to the mix. The peppers mimic the smoky flavor of charred jalapenos but with a grassier, more potent freshness. The ricotta is cool and creamy under the sweet honey.
For the lasagna pie, Ghasemipour hand-chops beef tongue, beef cheek and short ribs for the base of his 12-hour Bolognese. He layers on cheese, red sauce, béchamel, the Bolognese and a green sauce meant to emulate the flavor of spinach pasta.
The self-taught chef picked up the sweet yellow zucchini for the zucchini pizza at the Rocky Canyon farm stand at the Santa Monica farmers market that morning. He combines the yellow ribbons with torpedo onion, garlic cream and a combination of breadcrumbs and bits of crushed, fried garlic.
“I don’t consider anything I do fusion, because I’m not actively trying to merge different worlds,” he says.
At the heart of Ghasemipour’s pizza is his dough, a secret recipe he developed over the last three years. While working his corporate job, Ghasemipour hosted supper clubs and took various catering gigs around Los Angeles. He started making about 15 pizzas a day for friends, left his job and launched Mievè last summer.
“It’s a blend of flours from multiple mills and vendors,” he says. “We hand-mix the dough, about 70 to 80 pounds, and we don’t have a crazy high hydration.”
Whatever the method, what Ghasemipour is producing is unlike any other pan pizza I’ve tried in recent memory. The bottom is golden and lacy with a delicate crunch. The middle is impossibly airy, a light, puffy cushion for all the toppings.
The goal is to open a full restaurant, where Ghasemipour plans to serve pizza and a handful of other items. But while the freedom of a permanent base is important, what he’s really striving for is consistency.
“We don’t have full control over the conditions, temperature, humidity,” he says. “Sometimes the dough comes out perfect, sometimes it doesn’t. One day it might be a nine out of 10, other days a 10 out of 10.”
Mievè operates from about 5 to 9 p.m., or until they sell out. They allow limited preorders of whole pies online, but if you want to sample a few slices, you’ll have to order from the Kiff Kafe patio.
And if you’re wondering about the name, Ghasemipour says “mievè” means “fruit” in Farsi, taken from his native tongue.
“It also references fruits of labor,” he says. “But also a fresh element to thinking about food and nature.”
Caro Mio
Like many people during the pandemic, Jackson Baugh spent the majority of quarantine experimenting with carbohydrates. Preparing bread and pizza dough is something he did often in the 14 years he spent working in the culinary department of various cooking shows, including Guy Fieri’s “Tournament of Champions” and “Guy’s Ranch Kitchen.”
During the pandemic, he bartered with friends in the music industry, trading bread for band merch. His hobby became a business when friend Jason Kaplan, who owns Maury’s Bagels in Silver Lake, Calif., offered Baugh the space to start hosting pizza pop-up dinners.
Late last year, Baugh left the cooking TV world and started his Caro Mio pizza takeout business out of the shop. It’s named for Caro Mio, his “big old ginger Tabby cat.”
Baugh’s style of pizza is a cross between the puffy crust you might find at a Neapolitan pizza restaurant, the pies at a New York slice shop and whatever is under the heat lamp at your local health-food market hot bar. He incorporates 25% whole-grain flours from Grist & Toll, including a hard red flour that gives the crust a mild nuttiness.
The outer rim is chewy, blistered and bubbly with an extra-thin undercarriage that’s crusty and doesn’t droop. There’s a slight tang, with a distinct, earthy, malty flavor. No crust was discarded during the demolishing of this pizza.
Baugh likes to think of himself as a mad scientist of sorts when it comes to the toppings, unafraid to adopt a kitchen sink mentality when putting together the menu. He named his Suicide pizza after the suicide beverages he’d make at 7-Eleven soda fountains as a kid, squirting a little of each flavor into his cup.
In pizza form, the Suicide is a less frightening blend of pepperoni cups, a garlic-heavy tomato sauce, burrata and hot honey.
The Creamy Combo merges his “creamy mushroom” pizza and “creamy sausage” pizza. It’s a labor-intensive process that involves making a mushroom sauce, mushroom umami glaze and pan-roasting the cremini, enoki and shimeji mushrooms for the pizza. He adds crumbles of fennel-forward Italian sausage, fat slices of sweet red onion and dollops of ricotta zapped with lemon zest.
Baugh says his “creative toppings brain” is always working, so look out for new flavors the next time he pops up. He’ll be at Maury’s Bagels every Saturday in September, and plans to announce future dates on social media.
Where to find your next favorite pop-up pizza
Mievè at Kiff Kafe, 12229 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, www.instagram.com/eat.mieve
Caro Mio at Maury’s Bagels 2829 Bellevue Ave., Los Angeles, www.instagram.com/caro_mio_pizza