During the last five years one of the hottest national trends has been Neapolitan pizza. It’s a minimalist creation with very few toppings and a very thin crust, and it spends less than two minutes in a special oven, as opposed to five to seven minutes for an American standard pizza or as much as 25 for a Chicago deep-dish. When made right it’s a light, delightful meal, and when made wrong it’s either a soggy mess or a cracker with cheese and tomato on top.
This style of pizza has been slow to arrive in the Beach Cities, but it’s the entire focus of Redondo’s recently opened Locale 90. You’d better like pizza and salad if you go there, because it’s all they do. They’re self-consciously modern in décor and concept, the minimally decorated room dominated by the gaudily decorated high temperature pizza oven in the rear corner.
On my first trip I ordered a Caesar salad, on the second a kale, date, and almond salad and an order of roasted cauliflower. The Caesar was large and well-dressed with just a hint of anchovy, the kale salad slightly less effective despite having a more interesting set of flavors. There was a lot of kale with little cheese, and the citrus vinaigrette was used very sparingly so that it was almost invisible. I liked the ideas, but not the execution. The cauliflower was simply done but effective, something I might have made at home.
I couldn’t have made any of the pizzas at home, because they required that high-temperature oven. They saved the day. We had selected one with sweet fennel Italian sausage, and red onion, one with puttanesca sauce, and a white pizza with shaved Brussels sprouts, pancetta, and pecorino cheese. White pizzas are made without tomato sauce, and if you are ordering several pizzas at a table and sharing like we did, you should get at least one of these. The flavors on this one were excellent, though I might have preferred the pancetta cut a bit smaller so that there would be a little in every bite. The puttanesca pizza had a very spicy sauce with plenty of caper and anchovy sharpness – it was a bold Sicilian flavor, and one not often seen on pizzas, and the sausage and onion pizza was simple and perfect. The rim around each pizza crust, called the cornicone in Naples, had “leopard spots,” dots of slightly charred dough that is the sign of a perfectly cooked pie. Don’t order these to go, as Neapolitan pizzas don’t travel well – that delicately crisp crust steams inside a box.
Locale 90 has a very limited selection of wines, but one of them was a modestly priced Montepulciano by Cantina Zaccagnini that was excellent with pizza. Since they list things on a chalkboard I assume the selection changes, but if they have this wine I’d recommend it – it’s worth the $29 per bottle.
We tried three desserts – lemon polenta cake, biscotti, and chocolate hazelnut pudding. (We were also attracted to the Arborio rice pudding, but were too full to order all four desserts.) The chocolate hazelnut pudding was best, the polenta cake well flavored but slightly dry, and the biscotti was the only dud of the bunch. It didn’t have the crispness that double-baking gives to traditional biscotti, and the dough had a slightly sweet flavor that went oddly with the chocolate chips.
The ordering and serving system here could use some work; customers go to a register at the rear of the room to order, but only the food menu is visible while you are waiting in line, so everyone arrives at the counter with no idea what beverages are available. The wines are written in chalk on a small tablet by the register, making one wonder how difficult would it have been to put a slightly bigger chalkboard on the wall so people would know what they want. Conventional table service would have been much more enjoyable for customers, and would probably sell more food and wine since diners who have closed out their bill may hesitate to go through the line again for another glass of wine or dessert.
Our bill for three was $107.00, and though not all items worked on this visit, I’d come back for those pizzas. There are problems here that need to be worked out, but the good food and helpful, friendly staff give me hope that this place will make it.
Locale 90 is at 1718 South Catalina in Riviera Village. Open Mo-Th 11:30 am-3 pm and 5 pm -9:30 pm, Fr-Sa 11:30 am-10 pm, Su 11:30 am-9 PM. Street parking only, wheelchair access good, many vegetarian items. Menu at locale90.com, phone 310-540-9190.
