Description
Newport Beach's Mozza has a menu as simple and spare as the original. Pizzas are at the literal center of the list and the restaurant itself. A glowing oven with a half-moon slit anchors a casual room more colorful and airy than Batali's signature Crocs. Orbiting the oven are a cadre of cooks whose main purpose is to feed this beast. They coax balls of dough into pliant discs, layer on toppings and pull finished pies out of the gaping maw with a long-handled paddle. The best seat for a view of the action is at the counter. But anywhere you are, you smell the sweet and yeasty aroma of baking bread. The pizza is crisp, asymmetric, gnarled and pock-marked with char, the key signatures of a hand-made pie. Handling a slice means soot and flour dust on your fingers. Each 10-inch disc can feed exactly one person and is encircled by a bulbous ballooning crust that constitutes nearly half its acreage. The middle is as flat as a valley. A few toppings -- such as fresh mozzarella -- may make the pizza too wet to handle. If you have to resort to a knife and fork, know that that’s the way it's eaten in Naples.
