Pizzeria Mozza
800 West Coast Highway
Newport Beach, CA 92663
Now that the holiday hustle has died down, this is the time when people are still clinging to their New Year's resolutions, trying to replenish their bank accounts, and probably just wanting to stay home to rest after running all over trying to get things done for the holidays. Traditionally, this is also a slow time for restaurants, so they must devise reasons to make people venture out. Newport Beach Restaurant Week is one of the things that will definitely get us out of the house.
Over 400 restaurants and bars exist in Newport Beach and Corona Del Mar. Now in its 11th year, Newport Beach Restaurant Week has over 60 restaurants participating in this two-week event, which runs from January 16th to January 29th. Put on by the Newport Beach Restaurant Association and Dine Newport Beach, restaurants offer special, two or three-course prix fixe menus priced between $10 to $25 for lunch and $20 to $50 for dinner. This is an excellent opportunity to try a restaurant you have wanted but haven't yet. You can skim through the menus by clicking here: http://www.dinenb.com/restaurant-week/, but you should finish reading this review first.
When restaurant weeks roll around, I go to my wishlist, see what restaurants are participating, and plan to go. That's how we ended up at Pizzeria Mozza. I feel ashamed that we had not been to this popular pizza restaurant at the end of the Mainer's Mile on PCH yet. It definitely has some star power behind it. You might have heard of Mario Batali, Nancy Silverton, founder of La Brea Bakery, and Joe Bastianich, James Beard Award winner and partner to Mario Batali in far too many restaurants to list here.
These three opened Mozza on the corner of Highland and Melrose, in the high-traffic Fairfax area of LA, and then a year later took over the restaurant next door to create a more traditional Italian restaurant, Osteria Mozza. Mozza is more focused on pizzas, and they catch on. They opened an outpost in Singapore and opened this Newport eatery in 2011. In those six years, they have been talked about as having some of the best pizza in OC, been praised by numerous food critics, and received glowing reviews on Yelp. I was excited to try this place.
Parking here is valet and for $7, which we heard a few people scoff about. You can chance it and park in the McDonald's parking lot next door, but a sign tells you not to. We arrived about fifteen minutes early for our 7:30 dinner reservation, but they still sat us immediately. I enjoyed this space, as the high ceiling and bright orange and yellow painted walls detracted us from the tables that were too close to each other and the dark dining room. The bar is pushed to one side of the restaurant, while on the other side is another bar, where diners can eat while watching pizzas going in and out of the very active pizza oven, which is the centerpiece of this restaurant. We quickly made our selections from the $30 restaurant week menu. Let's see if Pizzeria Mozza lives up to its hype and if this was a good choice for Newport Beach Restaurant Week.
Salads were offered as the first of the three courses, and as we often do during restaurant weeks, Katie and I coordinated that we each try a different option. She started with the Mozza Caprese. This was an excellent version of this classic Italian salad. It had some of the most creamy burrata we have had, which was topped with a very well-done pesto. The tomato was not as prominent on this as it usually is, which is fine with me because I'm not a big tomato fan. A really lovely start to Katie's meal. With only two options, I chose the Insalata Mista as my salad. This mixed green salad was dressed with a lemon vinaigrette, which was fine but dull. This salad would have been better with some added blue cheese or something else. I finished it, but it was not my favorite salad.
The second course of the Restaurant Week menu offered much more variety, with thirteen pizzas. Katie selected this Bianca pizza, which featured fontina cheese, mozzarella, sage, and sottocenere cheese, which is a cheese that is rubbed with truffle oil during aging. Katie thought this pizza would be too rich, but it was more mellow than she thought. It had a pleasing taste, but she was looking for that big flavor burst. The crust here was done to a wonderful golden brown, and we both wished for some marinara to dunk the crust in.
I usually always get the pizza with the most meat, but at Mozza this evening, I threw myself a curveball when I ordered this Egg, Bacon, Potato, and Onion Pizza. I nicknamed this the breakfast pizza because it has all the ingredients on it, which would make a great breakfast casserole. At first, I was a little disappointed because I chose to start with the side of the pizza, which did not include the hen egg on it. When I got into the second half of this pizza, I really enjoyed it. The runny yolk really brought this to life, even though getting everything included here in one bite was still a challenge. When I did manage to get everything in one perfect bite, this pizza was magical. The potatoes were fork tender, the bacon had a good smokiness, and the crust was good. I'm the type of guy who usually leaves my crust. My only other complaint would be that they could have included a few more onions here, but other than that, this was a great pizza.
The last of our three-course dinner was dessert, and again, there were only two options, so Katie and I got one of each. I was surprised with the portion size of the Chef's Choice of Gelato. We got two huge scoops of vanilla and caramel with an Italian cookie separating them. Both were delicious. The vanilla was my favorite; it was creamy and had a rich flavor. The caramel one was good as well, but it had a tinge of what I perceived to be coffee to it, which threw me off. The Butterscotch Budino was nice and creamy and was not as sweet as we imagined it would be, which was a plus in our book. The little rosemary pine nut cookies that came with this stole the show. After having my little cookie, I imagined that if I worked here, I would eat a ton of these unique-tasting cookies. So good.
Coming to Pizzeria Mozza was a good choice for restaurant week. Not only did I get a chance to cross this place off my list, but when I added up the costs of the meal, we saved between ten to fifteen dollars per person, which is a good amount, especially with how much we eat out. As I've stated before on this blog, I'm more a fan of American-style pizzas with lots of cheese and toppings, but I've started to come around to liking authentic Italian-style pizzas recently. These were some good versions of what many would consider fancy pizzas. You can tell they are using some high-quality ingredients here and making these pizzas correctly. I've heard some good things about their lasagna, but from what our waiter told us, this is only available as a special on weekends. Speaking of our server, he was very nice and friendly but was definitely not what we would call overly attentive, as this three-course dinner stretched past the two-hour mark, with a long wait between courses and waiting for the check to arrive. Still, we will be back to explore more of their pizza menu and hopefully get a chance to try their lasagna. We're stoked that Newport Beach Restaurant Week has rolled around again. Now we just have to decide where to eat next.
Out of five orange Crocs (because those are the trademark footwear that Chef Mario Batali always wears), five being best to zero being worst, Pizzeria Mozza gets 3.5 orange Crocs.
For more information about Pizzeria Mozza, head to their website here: http://newportbeach.pizzeriamozza.com/the-restaurant/
No comments:
Post a Comment