The Best Pizza Restaurants in Los Angeles 2026

A tall, blistered edge that eats like fermented bread, not a cracker, and a butterscotch budino to finish: that is a night at Pizzeria Mozza, and it is the reason Los Angeles argues about pizza the way New York does. The city has no single pizza tradition. It has a Neapolitan-trained pastry legend on Melrose, a Detroit-ish pan cult in Echo Park, a vegetable-first wood oven in Venice, and a Fairfax red-sauce room that feeds the film industry. Below are the five pizzas worth crossing town for in 2026, ranked, then the great Italian rooms where pizza is not the point. Every pick is individually reviewed and scored in our guide.

How Los Angeles actually eats pizza

There is no Los Angeles pizza style, and that is the city's advantage. The best rooms borrow from Naples, Rome and Detroit and answer to Southern California produce instead of a dogma, so a nettle-and-lardo pie and a cheese-lacquered pan square can both be the best pizza in town on the same night. The Los Angeles dining guide maps the whole city by occasion, our definitive pizza guide sets the vocabulary these bakers work in, and the Italian restaurants guide places these kitchens against the pasta rooms next door.

The pizzas that matter, ranked

1. Pizzeria Mozza — Melrose

Nancy Silverton, a James Beard Award winner and the baker who built La Brea Bakery, has run Pizzeria Mozza at the corner of Melrose and Highland since 2006, and it is still the reference pizza in the city. Her dough ferments long and bakes tall, so the cornicione puffs and chars like good bread; order the pie with fennel sausage and one with squash blossom, then the butterscotch budino that regulars treat as mandatory. Pizzas run about $19 to $24, our editors score it 9.2 for food, and it is the rare pizzeria listed in the MICHELIN Guide for California. Not for a quiet first date — the room is loud and the tables are close, by design.

2. Quarter Sheets — Echo Park

Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin turned a Sunset Boulevard storefront into the city's cult pan-pizza room in January 2022, and Quarter Sheets earns its line out the door. Lindell calls the style Detroit-ish: a thick, airy pan baked to a crisp, cheese-lacquered edge, with rotating toppings like the pierogi-inspired Polish Yacht Club of potato, lemon cream and bacon. Ziskin's cakes are a second reason to come. Whole pans run roughly $28 to $34, and our editors give it a 9.4 for food and a 9.5 for value, the highest pizza value score in Los Angeles. Not for a large weeknight group — the room is small, walk-in-heavy, and the pans sell out early.

3. Gjelina — Abbot Kinney, Venice

The wood oven at Gjelina has anchored Abbot Kinney since 2008, and its blistered, vegetable-forward pies are the westside standard. This is pizza in the California idiom: the lamb-sausage pie, the wild-nettle-and-lardo, a mushroom pizza built on produce rather than a fixed Neapolitan formula. Expect about $18 to $22 a pizza and a spend near $45 to $80 a head once the small plates land. It is the best pizza in a room you would take a date to. Not for a purist chasing a classic tomato-and-mozzarella Margherita — the kitchen is thinking about vegetables first, crust second.

4. Cosa Buona — Echo Park

Zach Pollack, the chef behind Alimento, took over the old Pizza Buona corner at Sunset and Alvarado in 2018 and turned Cosa Buona into the neighbourhood's everyday pizza-and-red-sauce anchor. The pepperoni pie with its cupping, crisped edges is the order, alongside the chopped salad and a Sicilian-leaning square. Pizzas run about $18 to $22, our editors score it 9.1 for food and 9.3 for value, and it is the rare serious pizza you can walk into on a Tuesday. Not for a special-occasion dinner — this is a corner joint doing corner-joint things very well, not a destination room.

5. Jon & Vinny's — Fairfax

Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, the duo behind Animal, opened Jon & Vinny's on Fairfax in 2015, and it became the industry's default Italian-American canteen. The wood-fired pizzas share a menu with the famous spicy fusilli and a serious Caesar; the LL Cool J pie, layered with ricotta and marinara, is the one to know. Pizzas land around $21 to $25, our editors give it a 9.2 for food, and it opens early enough to be a breakfast pizza too. Not for a value hunter — portions are generous but the bill climbs fast across an all-day menu.

Great Italian rooms that aren't pizzerias, but book anyway

Two of the city's best Italian kitchens serve pizza and would resent being ranked on it. Bestia, Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis's Arts District room, has been the hardest reservation in Los Angeles for a decade on the strength of its house-cured salumi and wood-fired pastas, not its pizza. Mother Wolf, Evan Funke's Hollywood Roman room, is a pasta temple first; the pizza is an afterthought to the cacio e pepe. Book either for the occasion, order the pasta, and let the pizzerias above own the pizza.

Booking notes

Los Angeles pizza splits into two booking worlds. Mozza, Gjelina and Jon & Vinny's take reservations and release tables on Resy two to four weeks out, with weekends moving fastest. Quarter Sheets and Cosa Buona lean walk-in, so the strategy is timing rather than a calendar — arrive at opening or in the late lull. For the occasion maths on when a loud pizzeria is the right call and when it is not, our first-date guide and birthday-dinner guide do the reasoning.

Keep reading

The same editors rank the best pizza in New York, Chicago's essential pizzerias, and the best sushi counters in Los Angeles when pizza is not the night's plan.

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