The upside of my brother and his girlfriend abandoning me in Pasadena for the beach – much to the chagrin of my snowbird neighbors who find me to be a vastly inferior front porch conversationalist – is they can keep tabs on the South Bay pizza scene for me. Sitting where I am in the San Gabriel Valley, the slices in Manhattan often feel more easily accessible than those in Torrance. The JetBlue redeye from Burbank to Kennedy? Easy peasy. They have live DirecTV on the back of every chair if you can’t sleep! The 110 South at dinnertime? Torture.
That said, I immediately questioned the credibility of my newly-appointed Beach Cities Pizza Guides as we pulled up to their first recommendation, Grimaldi’s, which is just a stone’s throw from the still-dormant ArcLight in El Segundo, to collect our two takeaway pies. The exterior looks just like your average office park-adjacent California Pizza Kitchen, nestled underneath one of the many outposts of commercial real estate giant JLL. (Which is not to diss CPK – I love me one of their chicken toastada pies, add avocado please – but it’s part of a genre I call “flatbread etc.”, it’s not true pizza.)
I grew even more skeptical of Grimaldi’s when I saw the box, which touts locations across 14 states. Even Alabama and Idaho have a Grimaldi’s! I’m all for small businesses expanding their footprint and realizing the American Dream without getting hosed by a team-up of Mark Cuban and Mr. Wonderful in the process, but how good could a pizza possibly be if it exists in Idaho?
I had to tell myself to take deep breaths and remember: Danny, your favorite Chicago deep dish pie comes from Giordano’s, which has dozens of locations across 10 states. Not all mini-major pizza chains are sellouts; in fact, many are able to expand because they’re so beloved. That’s pepperoni-fueled capitalism at its best: the demand for a slice is so high, the proprietor must set up a second window to dispense of said slice, and then a third, and then a fourth. And if that window happens to be in a sterile, rodent-free edifice that also facilitates the signing of office leases upstairs, so be it. Remember: You’re in it for the pizza, Danny. Gulp.
Well, color me surprised. I liked this pizza. In fact, I really liked it. The trick behind Grimaldi’s pie is they’ve got a coal-fired oven, which keeps the cooking temperature between 800 and 900 degrees and produces a crisp like none other. The eco-conscious class will say that wood-fired and convection ovens are just as good – indeed, the political assault on coal extends not just to West Virginia mining towns, but the pizza industry – but those are the same people who tell you with a straight face that LED lights produce just as satisfying a glow as halogen. I’m all for cutting emissions, but those people are liars. This past weekend, CalTrans updated one of the four small tunnels on the 110 heading North into Highland Park and Pasadena to LEDs. The other three still burn halogen. The old ones make you feel like you’re in a 1980s Michael Mann film; the new one puts you smack dab in the middle of Blackhat. You tell me which feels right.
But back to the pizza. Partly because of the oft-levied objections to coal, there aren’t many coal-fired joints left – I’m unaware of any other in Greater LA, but surely there must be – which makes this pie feel very unique. The crust is what I would call sturdy, but not in a laborious-to-eat kind of way; this is the sort of heft that makes your teeth and jaw feel like they’re actually being used properly for once, rising to the occasion to meet the crispy, crunchy textural symphony that is Grimaldi’s. How blessed we are to live in this moment, even if it means contending with the unpleasant glare of LED lights; our cavemen ancestors had to eat raw chicken bones and risk salmonella if they wanted to feel this alive.
Grimaldi’s originated in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, which is not too far from the longstanding Italian groceries that sell the kind of hearty, quality ingredients that top this pie. The main thing you notice about the pizza after you’ve adequately indulged in the crust is just how hearty each component on the top is. The mozzarella is clumpy in a way that evokes the curdling process, making you feel like you can taste the source of the buffalo’s milk. I felt like I was eating a good quality cheese, though it struck me as too heavy for a crust this delightfully wafer thin. The pepperoni is better than what you’d find on a good charcuterie board curated at Whole Foods without attention to the number of digits at the bottom of the receipt. The sauce is also well-seasoned and well-executed, though there wasn’t enough of it for my taste. With a crust this firm, they could really stand to layer on some more sauce; there’s really no risk of flop here.
To keep things consistent from place-to-place, I always review the standard pepperoni pie, unless there’s a different, single signature pizza that a specific joint is world-renowned for. So, I’m not going to formally evaluate the pesto pie that we also ordered, alongside the pepperoni. But, what I will say is, I think I preferred the way that the olive oil-rich pesto produced a slightly more toothsome version of the innards of Grimaldi’s delectable crust. Of course, I wonder if the same might be possible for the pepperoni if the red sauce – which surely contains some olive oil – were more thickly layered on. I love the crunchiness of the bottom, but on the pepperoni pie, I wanted the same gluteny textural interplay that I got from the inside of the pesto pie.
As an outsider looking in, when I think of El Segundo, my mind immediately goes to the massive Chevron Oil Refinery that was first opened in the city over a century ago by the Standard Oil Company. It’s still the largest-producing refinery on the West Coast. Given the state’s massive effort to reduce fossil fuel dependency – surely to be expedited with Governor Newsom comfortably surviving this week’s recall election – who really knows how much time the refinery has left in operation. The same could be said for Grimaldi’s, as El Segundo, like many cities before it, will certainly ban coal-burning ovens when the political climate is right. At that point, if I want to bite into this special crust, I guess I’ll just have to buy a plane ticket to Idaho. Too bad there’s not a nonstop from Burbank, and I’ll find myself right back in the neighborhood, running the usual 20 minutes behind on my way to LAX.
82/100
Grimaldi’s is open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 2121 Rosecrans Ave Ste 1399 in El Segundo. Place an order by calling (310) 648-7503 or on the web at https://www.grimaldispizzeria.com/.
My First Bite Reaction (on YouTube):
Ate at one in I think it was in Scottsdale AZ. I found them to be “OK” but not much better than Dominoes which I have only tried once and found them unsatisfying.