I had the opportunity to hit da Michele and Mozza in Hollywood/LA a couple weeks ago, and I can’t say I was particularly impressed with either. da Michele was just OK at best, and I probably wouldn’t go back. Mozza was better, but it didn’t live up to my expectations. Maybe that’s not a fair standard. I would go back to Mozza, but not just for the pizza.
We started at da Michele. I thought the sauce and cheese were good, but the crust was VERY tough and tasted heavily salted. I doubt it would have had much flavor at all without the high level of salt. The toughness surprised me the most. It was excessively chewy, hard to cut with a knife and fork, and took a considerable amount of effort to pull apart with my fingers.
The da Michele pizza also had a large amount of bench flour char and yellowing on the bottom. After dinner, I walked back to see some pizza being made, and I instantly knew why. I’ve never seen so much flour being used to open a dough. They put the ball into a mound of flour, pressed it out some then put a huge pile of flour on top and pressed it into the dough. After that, they would build a mountain of flour on the bench, flip the disk over on top of it, and press the dough into the flour. Bake time at da Michele was about 1:15.
The Mozza pie had a nice crunch, and the toppings were good. I expected more flavor in the dough. I thought it was kind of plain. They were doing 5-6 minute bakes.
da Michele:
