How a tiny LA pizza joint skyrocketed to quantity 5 on the planet

It all started in 2022 with eight counter seats, one scorching-hot oven and an audacious purpose — to make the perfect pizza in Los Angeles.

Four years later, Pizzeria Sei isn’t simply the perfect pizza within the City of Angels — it’s additionally a number of the greatest on the planet.

That’s based on this 12 months’s 50 Top Pizza global rankings, introduced Tuesday in Naples, Italy — the place skilled judges from the Boot and elsewhere handed out the coveted awards to a fortunate few.

The pint-sized spot that Chef Willian Joo and his companion Jennifer So opened in LA’s Pico-Robertson space tied at quantity 5, worldwide, beating out scores of Italian choices — an astonishing feat that tells the world what Southern California diners already know.

“So proud of William and all of our team at both locations working tirelessly to keep up with demand while retaining the highest quality possible,” So wrote on social media following the gorgeous win.

In a Los Angeles restaurant panorama shocked by limitless closures, spiraling prices and altering habits, Pizzeria Sei’s signature, Tokyo-style Neapolitan pies have discovered an insatiable viewers — one which shortly demanded a substantial enlargement of the operation.

Even after the pair opened a bigger flagship in Palms this summer time, reservations are likely to disappear quickly after they’re launched — whereas hopeful walk-ins have been identified to line up earlier than the doorways open.

Chef Joo’s culinary basis consists of stints at LA greats like Providence — his pies mix conventional Neapolitan pizza-making methods with Japanese precision, producing blistered, leopard-spotted crusts with a definite sea salt crunch.

A real, Tokyo-style Neapolitan emphasizes dough fermentation and texture — Joo’s model pinches and crimps the dough’s rim earlier than it hits the oven.

Takeout from the unique location, now branded as Sei Pizza Bar, is the simplest technique to expertise the phenomenon — with small-ish pizzas beginning at $21, presently. For that, you’ll get a marinara pie with out cheese — tomato, garlic, basil, oregano, further virgin olive oil and a little bit of Sicilian sea salt.

One diner who managed to snag a reservation on the new Palms location, on the nook of Overland and Tabor, declared the unique Sei their “favorite pizza in the city,” earlier than diving right into a $38 particular pizza, known as the Culture Diavola.

The ultra-thin, crispy pie — topped with gochujang, candied guanciale and stracciatella — was “one of the most complex and unique pizzas I’ve ever had,” the diner gushed on Reddit.

“So much going on here, and it works beautifully together,” they added. “Sweet, salty, tangy.”

Another diner who scored a desk on opening evening conceded that Sei is “a little pricey,” however they stated they fortunately “bit the bullet for date night or a special occasion.”

“10/10, I’ll be back again and again,” the fan raved.

Others have been much more succinct.

“Pizza [is] bomb as hell,” one commenter declared — though they complained in regards to the cramped eating circumstances, acoustics, consolation ranges and the excessive value level, earlier than conceding, “Pizza was so good though!”

The Palms location offers Chef Joo an opportunity to department out past the unique pies that made Sei well-known.

The new menu provides two dramatically totally different pizza types: montanara, a Neapolitan specialty wherein the dough is fried earlier than being completed right into a pizza; and scrocchiarell, a skinny Roman-style pizza baked till audibly crunchy.

Calls to the restaurant weren’t answered.

“Holding it down in LA by myself this week,” So informed her followers on Instagram earlier.

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