LA Chef Jason Neroni Looks to Italy and Japan for Pizza Inspiration

A fire-pocked pizza hits a patio table at The Rose Venice, but tomato sauce and cheese are nowhere in sight. Instead, the base is bright yellow miso corn purée and a rosy seared bluefin tuna mountain rises up in the center, topped with towering shaved scallion wisps. Chef Jason Neroni takes a spoon and levels the savory mound, spreading what is basically tuna tartare from edge to edge. A trip to Tokyo inspired this pizza, which fits with Neroni’s freewheeling, globally influenced style that will be on display at a Culver City pizza spinoff in 2022.

Before the pandemic struck, The Rose was one of L.A.’s busiest restaurants. The Venice institution dates to 1979 and underwent a substantial refresh in 2015 with Neroni partnering with Sprout LA / L.A. Specialty Produce founder Michael Glick. After navigating California’s fluctuating COVID-19 restrictions, they’ve bounced back and are well positioned to thrive in our current restaurant climate, with a versatile space that hosts over 300 patio seats. Their menu includes many craveable comfort foods with Neroni-esque twists, but pizzas are their top sellers.

Neroni’s pizzas have come a long way from his childhood experiments in Orange County. “My mom used to buy French breads, and we would buy Kraft mozzarella and pepperoni from Ralphs and I would put them in the toaster and make French bread pizzas, which I still love to this day.” Neroni now serves pizzas on leftover Rose baguettes fairly often for staff meal.

At the chef’s table in front of The Rose’s open kitchen, Neroni scrolls through iPhone photos, sharing favorite pizzas from his February 2020 trip to Tokyo, right before COVID-19 exploded. He was most impressed with Savoy, a pizzeria located across from the new Olympic Stadium. This is where he found “tuna pizza” on a blackboard menu, which inspired the aforementioned bluefin pizza, though Savoy’s version features fresh-grated wasabi, versus the Rose’s wasabi vinaigrette. At the Rose, Neroni also marinates tuna in ginger oil and adds miso and mayo to his corn purée.

At Savoy, Neroni also devoured a Calabrian chile and sausage pizza that he liked even more. He visited Seirinkan, a restaurant that’s revered for Neapolitan pizza, though Neroni prefers styles with more structure. He’s also found Japanese pizza inspiration from a book that Yoshihiro Imai wrote called “Circle: Dishes and Scenes from enboca Kyoto.”

“Japan and Italy have such a love affair with each other in general,” Neroni says, referencing all the Michelin-starred Italian restaurants in Japan. When he gets a free meal with family, they normally head to Sawtelle Japantown in Los Angeles. Visiting Chinchikurin for okonomiyaki inspired The Rose’s Godzilla pizza, a meaty creation that combines crumbled green garlic pork sausage, pepperoni, bacon, smoked mozzarella, squiggles of miso aioli and yakitori sauce, and crunchy clipped scallions.

The Tokyo trip widened Neroni’s view of pizza making, though he’s always been open to international influences in his cooking. At Superba Snack Bar in Venice, he smoked bucatini for his carbonara, topping it with a poached egg; and lavished spaghettini with crab, uni, yuzu, and pickled jalapeño.

At B Side Pizza & Wine Bar, the concept he helped launch in New York City in 2014, he served a carbonara pizza and an Oscar the Grouch pizza topped with mozzarella fonduta, garlic puree, black kale, and spinach that cooked down in the oven.

Pizzas like these would no doubt be novel to his father’s ancestors from Florence, a city that he’s visited many times. Right before The Rose opened, Neroni and his family bought a house in Umbria, in a small town of about 80 people near Tuscany’s border. He enjoys tending to a pizza oven and wood grill in a scenic outdoor kitchen that overlooks surrounding hills. The Neronis visit annually, though the pandemic interrupted those plans.

Neroni first started making pizza professionally at Osteria La Buca in Hollywood back in 2011. “I inherited a dough that they had been using,” he says. “My head was spinning so fast there when I first got there that I accepted it at the moment. We increased the temperature on the oven, but it was an electric oven. It wasn’t a wood-burning oven. For me, unless it has wood burning, it doesn’t really work for me.”

He really dove down the pizza rabbit hole when researching pizza in New York City for B Side while the first location was under construction. “I ate pizza everywhere in New York City for two months,” he says. “I had to expand my belt size. We would eat pizza every day and we would test pizza every day, testing dough. Eventually I came to find dough that I liked.”

At the Rose, Neroni bulk ferments his dough for 24 hours, feeding it with mother dough that they’ve lovingly kept in the bakery for six years. “On the second day we roll the balls, let them relax, and then they are left outside for at least six hours before service to come up to temperature. Pizza’s bread. You have to let the bread rise. There’s a very specific way how they’re supposed to punch it out. There’s a whole method.”

He chooses to keep their grain bill private, but admits to flour from Utah’s Central Milling and baking flour “for structure.” He adds, “The hydration on it is probably a little lower than some peoples, but Neapolitan for me, the pizza’s a bit soupy. This, you’ve got to work it a little bit to pull it.”

The Rose oven can only bake 4-5 pizzas at once and pizza is so popular at the high-volume restaurant that they limit each table to one pizza at dinner. In Culver City, they’ll have a larger Pavesi brick oven that matches the oven they use at B Side. Neroni says, “The arc that you get off of the flame is great.” It’s made in Italy, shipped in pieces to upstate New York and assembled there before getting installed in L.A. Neroni prefers using oak to fuel his ovens, which burns hotter and cleaner than many other woods.

“We’ve been trying to do a pizza restaurant for a long time,” Neroni says. “It will be one foot stuck in Italy and one foot stuck in Japan.” Expect pizzas in the same realm as the Tokyo and Godzilla, though they’ll also offer more traditional options like Margherita and pepperoni pie. “You have to know your audience,” he says. “It’s a family neighborhood.” He anticipates a variety of styles and shapes, both thin crust and thicker crust.

Pizza certainly won’t be the only menu option at the unnamed Culver City restaurant. “What do you eat when you go to pizzerias?” Neroni asks. “You’re either eating chopped salad or you’re eating wings. A lot of it has to do with your hands.” He’s installing binchotan (Japanese white charcoal) grills to cook assorted skewers, potentially including lobster tails. Yardbird, the beloved Hong Kong yakitori restaurant, has been one key influence. He’ll also offer dishes like carbonara, but made with ramen noodles.

“I’ve never been one to fall on the trajectory of being traditional,” Neroni says. “I absolutely never have and never will.”