Repeat destination? 🏝️ Traveling for merch? Lost, damaged? Tell us What you're owed ✈️
GREAT AMERICAN BITES
Food travel

Fast-food pizza hits new heights at 800 Degrees

Larry Olmsted
Special for USA TODAY

The scene: There are countless fast-food chain restaurants in this country, and for years there have been a growing number of gourmet brick-oven pizzerias, but no one ever thought to combine the two concepts until now. 800 Degrees Pizza is a quickly expanding chain based out of the greater Los Angeles area that takes a rapid-service approach to pizza but does it with a gourmet flair decidedly missing at popular national brands like Pizza Hut and Domino's. The first location was in Westwood and there are restaurants in Santa Monica, Pasadena, LAX airport, and two new ones in Las Vegas, at the SLS and Monte Carlo resorts. A New York outlet is rumored to be in the works.

Designed for efficiency, 800 Degrees uses an assembly-line process where you move down the counter and see your pizza made right before your eyes. The first station is crust, where a pizzaiola hand-tosses a ball of dough into your pizza base, like an old-school New York pizzeria would. Then you move on to toppings, which are all laid out in containers on the other side of the glass counter from you – it's like Subway only with gourmet ingredients. As you move down you can also order salads and starters that are similarly assembled before your eyes. Finally your pie reaches the cook, who inserts it into one of the ovens, narrow slits in a tile wall, true wood-burning ovens, where it is cooked at a temperature of at least 800° - hence the name - and as much as 1000°.

It takes just two minutes for your pizza to cook at this ultra-high temperature. While it is cooking, you select your beverage and pay. There is a separate station for utensils, seasonings and self-serve soda, with one of the newfangled fully computerized touch-screen Coca-Cola dispensers like those found in Five Guys. The plates are real ceramic and the utensils actual metal, and you even get a cool spatula for dishing out slices. Despite the cafeteria-style ordering process, there is more of a fast casual vibe than fast food, and the restaurants are physically nicer, with marble-topped or heavy, dark wood tables, high ceilings, staffers who come by and offer everything from extra plates to boxes for leftovers. All in all, it is more like a traditional restaurant experience, only faster.

Reason to visit: Pizza, burrata starters, salads

The food: 800 Degrees has completely reinvented fast-food pizza, akin to what places like Bobby Flay's Burger Palace and Shake Shack have done for the humble burger, but even more dramatically. While not quite a substitute for the crop of truly authentic sit-down gourmet Neapolitan pizzerias, it is far above anything else available in the fast-pizza realm. It's not just the ovens and custom assembly that makes it work, it is the huge selection of high-quality ingredients that really set the chain apart. The California-made fresh mozzarella comes in balls, which are torn into chunks and put on your pizza, just like they do in Italy, not grated or sliced into rounds. The basil is actual leaves plucked from the stems, the meatballs made from grass-fed beef, and bunches of dried rosemary sprigs are shaken over the pies. All the toppings look good enough to eat on their own, and this is what also differentiates 800 Degrees from a traditional Neapolitan pizzeria, where there are typically very few variants and the focus is on perfecting about three basic pies. Here choices are much more creative, from wild-caught Florida shrimp to capers to the house specialty, bacon marmalade.

The hardest thing about eating at 800 Degrees is mastering the menu, especially as you stand on line to order, because there are a lot of choices to make. The pizzas are available in four basic styles, all of which are then infinitely customizable. These are traditional margherita (tomato sauce, cheese, olive oil and basil), bianca (cheese, garlic, oil, no sauce), marinara (sauce, garlic, oil, oregano, no cheese) and verde (Genovese pesto and mozzarella). Then there are about 40 toppings, including a wide array of meats (anchovies, chicken, bacon, sopressata, etc.), cheeses (Fontina, bleu, goat, pecorino, etc.) and veggies (peppadews, eggplant, pineapple, butternut squash, etc.). There are also a handful of premium toppings for an extra surcharge, like true prosciutto di Parma, clams, and imported buffalo mozzarella. Finally, there are more than a dozen pre-designed specialty pies if you don't feel like improvising.

The one choice you do not have to make is size, because there is only one, and it is bigger than the traditional Neapolitan pie, too big for most people to eat alone. The prices are very reasonable but the toppings quickly add up. A good strategy for two people is to split a pizza and get starters or a salad, which are also assembled to order and in equally generous portions. Like the pies, there are four basic salads (greens, gorgonzola, chopped and Caesar) plus toppings. Meatballs are a great starter, soft and homemade tasting, and as you go down the line the cook will toss a couple into an oven-proof dish, top it with some sauce and grated parmesan, and put it into the oven. Another top starter is the burrata, a ball of mozzarella-like cheese with a creamy oozy center, which here forms its own section of the menu, available dressed with a choice of four toppings, from cherry tomatoes with pesto to beets and balsamic vinegar. Burrata is a delicious and unusual cheese just starting to catch on in this country, but this way of presenting it is especially unique and inspired and another reminder why this chain has taken fast-food pizza way beyond its current boundaries.

800 Degrees makes a big deal out of its authenticity, and even distributes a flyer about the history and traditions of authentic Neapolitan-style pizza, but this is not a style with which most Americans are familiar. The crust is thin and the oven wood-fired, but there is a lot of difference between true Neapolitan-style pizza and the more common wood-fired, thin-crust variety sold in this country. For starters, it is not crispy at all, not even the exterior edge, and instead the dough is soft and chewy, the toppings a bit liquidy. It is very much a fork-and-knife affair, not good for picking up. This style is not intrinsically better or worse but it is different and you need to be prepared as some do not care for the lack of crispiness. But they deliver very well on their promise, using real 00 flour to achieve a crust reminiscent of that in Naples, along with all the other premium ingredients.

The pizzas are very good, but you do want to choose at least one topping because the basic margherita is a little bland, and the mozzarella, while fresh, melts into tastelessness. I'd definitely upgrade the cheese. Fortunately, the toppings are excellent across the board, especially the bacon jam, a really good and unusual choice, combining sweetness with rich bacon flavor. The caramelized onions are excellent, the meatballs very good, and it is hard to go wrong here.

Pilgrimage-worthy?: No but if you get a hankering for pizza – who doesn't? – it's an excellent choice and quick as well.

Rating: Yum! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)

Price: $-$$ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)

Details: Original, 10889 Lindbrook Drive, Westwood Village, Los Angeles; 310-443-1911; 800degreespizza.com

Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.

Featured Weekly Ad