Solo work

Casa Bianca (1650 Colorado Blvd. Eagle Rock)
Whenever I’m at Casa Bianca I feel like I’m interrupting a family reunion. The fact that they don’t pick up the phone after 6 on a Saturday night only adds to the alienation. It’s not that they’re elitist, or rude. It’s more the feeling that everyone working there, whether by blood or simple ethic, is part of the same, fully-functional, circulatory system. There’s the 50ish gentleman at the front and his wife, and then there are the many unassuming waitresses who I assume, wrongly or rightly, to be the direct descendants of Sam Martorana, the recently deceased founder. And then there are the customers, all of whom seem perfectly comfortable waiting 2 ½ hours on a Saturday night, packed into the small reception area or lucky enough to grab a plastic chair on the sidewalk. Everybody belongs. Maybe it’s because everyone, no matter where they came from, has been to this restaurant at some point. We all remember those childhood pizza houses, dimly lit, neon sign on the front, peppermints by the cash register, with bad paintings of the home country on the wall, presided over by strikingly casual waitresses and waiters, most of them related to the owner. We’ve all been to this place, but most of us have not had this pizza.

The pie at Casa Bianca arrives as an oblong, misshapen, irregular disc. Almost completely uniform in its flatness, it would resemble a plane interrupted by occasional dunes on a topographic map. The cheese that covers and largely unites the dish is charred to a degree that many joints would never even consider. The thin and crispy crust generated by the time I suspect it spends in the oven is a perfect accent to the tomato sauce. We always opt for the mushroom and pepperoni combination, as I’m a firm believer in the laws of diminishing returns when it comes to pies and subs, but I can’t imagine that a pizza here could ever actually be bad, so…use your best judgment I guess. On the rare occasion that I opted for a pasta dish instead of the pizza I was pleasantly surprised that it, to some degree, held its own in comparison. The salad, though, resembles something that could be prepared at a Wendy’s super bar in the late 1980s. The garlic bread is pretty basic, in a not so exciting way. Not that any of this really matters, once you've had the pizza. (A)