5 CA Pizza Joints In Nation's Top 101: Daily Meal

CALIFORNIA — California is home to five of the top pizzerias in the country, according to The Daily Meal. The site for foodies recently released its list of the 101 Best Pizzas in America for 2020, including restaurants in San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Windsor in Sonoma County, and affiliated restaurants in Newport Beach and on the San Francisco Peninsula.

The national food and drink website included restaurants in 17 states and the District of Columbia, with New York claiming the most spots on the list with 21.

For the fourth straight year, Frank Pepe's Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, Connecticut, has the No. 1 pizza in America, according to The Daily Meal.

In the California, the following pizza places were ranked:

• Rank 20: Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco, with additional restaurants in Burlingame and Palo Alto
• Rank 29: Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco
• Rank 48: Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles, with an additional restaurant in Newport Beach
• Rank 65: Cheese Board Pizza in Berkeley
• Rank 68: PizzaLeah in Windsor

The highest ranking Bay Area pizza joint is also a James Beard award winner. "Pizzeria Delfina is a farm-to-table neighborhood restaurant in San Francisco. The family-owned business specializes in Neapolitan-inspired pizza, with popular items including Margherita with tomato, fior di latte mozzarella and basil; prosciutto with caciocavallo (an Italian cheese), mozzarella, panna and arugula; and broccoli rabe with caciocavallo, mozzarella, olives and hot peppers."

Are you looking for impressive credentials? You'll find them here! "Tony’s Pizza Napoletana has won Best Pizza Margherita at the World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy, and Best Pizza Romana at the World Championship of Pizza Makers, so you know these pies are the real deal. You’ll find a bunch of styles here, including Neapolitan, New York and Detroit, but you’d do yourself a disservice if you didn’t try the award-winning Margherita. Only 73 are made per day."

The lone SoCal entry is Pizzeria Mozza. "Los Angeles Times food critic S. Irene Virbila describes Pizzeria Mozza’s Margherita pie as a 'beautiful melding of fresh milky mozzarella' with 'light tomato sauce and fresh, fragrant basil leaves on crust that’s both tender and crackling crisp on the bottom, blistered and smoky from the wood-burning oven.' If that doesn’t sell you, other options include corn with mushrooms, Fresno chiles, fontina and mozzarella; or Shrimp Aglio e Olio with garlic, mozzarella and fontina."

Have you ever tried a sourdough pizza crust? "Cheese Board Pizza came to life when employees at the cheese shop and bakery down the block combined sourdough baguette dough with their favorite cheeses and vegetables. After selling just one type of vegetarian pizza each night, the offering became so popular that they opened a pizzeria two doors down. Using the same recipe today, Cheese Board Pizza’s rotating selection of always-meatless pies are revered in the Berkeley, California, community."

The Daily Meal praises the eponymous pizza chef in Sonoma County, "PizzaLeah in Windsor, California, is named for executive pizza maker Leah Scurto, an award-winning pizza chef and seven-year member of the United States Pizza Team. Her Old Grey Beard pizza with red sauce, mozzarella, fontina, Italian sausage, Calabrian peppers, hot honey and orange zest earned second place at The West Coast Pizza Cup in 2019, and lucky for you, it’s on the menu at PizzaLeah."

Here’s a look at the top 10 nationally:

1. Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (New Haven, Connecticut)
2. Pequod's (Chicago, Illinois)
3. John's of Bleecker Street (New York City, New York)
4. Razza Pizza Artigianale (Jersey City, New Jersey)
5. Slim & Husky's Pizza Beeria (Nashville, Tennessee)
6. Buddy's Pizza (Detroit, Michigan)
7. Santarpio's (Boston, Massachusetts)
8. Lucali (Brooklyn, New York)
9. Sally's Apizza (New Haven, Connecticut)
10. Piece (Chicago, Illinois)

Since 2012, The Daily Meal has ranked America's best pizzas, noting that "It can sometimes feel like there is a pizzeria around every corner, but there's just something about a great pizza."

This year, the editors said they took "special care to highlight pizzerias from all parts of the country, as well as female- and Black-owned businesses," and focused on smaller establishments and local favorites that had been successful branching out to a few locations.

As varied as the pies on The Daily Meal's list are, there is some common ground, according to the magazine's editors, "All have many of the qualities you'd expect in an above-standard pie: saucy, cheesy slices of heaven with a doughy-yet-crispy crust and a nice flop; along with a respectable amount of grease — just enough to get the job done," the editors wrote. "Some have basic-but-essential ingredients like pepperoni and house-made sausage, while others venture outside the box with creative-yet-functional toppings."

See The Daily Meal's 101 Best Pizzas in America list for 2020.

— Patch editors Elizabeth Janney, Rich Kirby, Tim Moran and Bea Karnes contributed to this report