Award-Winning Chef To Open New Restaurant In Culver City

CULVER CITY, CA — Nancy Silverton, an award-winning chef and baker, is opening a pizza takeaway restaurant in Culver City this fall. Pizzette will open at the Citizen Public Market food hall on Culver Boulevard (which is still under construction), and will focus on small pizzas, Eater Los Angeles reported.

This is Silverton's first new restaurant in six years. In addition to traditional pizzas, there will also be stuffed pizzettes, which will be a cross between a pizza and a pita sandwich — "not to be confused with a calzone," Silverton told the Los Angeles Times. The dish was inspired by a trip to Jerusalem where she ate sabich — a mixture of eggplant, potatoes, eggs and a pickled mango condiment, stuffed into a pita, the news website reported.

"Every bite that you had was a different bite," Silverton told the Times. "And it hit me at 1 in the morning or whatever crazy time it was: When a traditional sandwich is built horizontally, every bite is the same. But a sandwich that is stuffed from above gives you the opportunity to make every bite matter."

Silverton won the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef Award in 2014, and co-founded La Brea Bakery with her then-husband chef Mark Peel. Her other restaurants include Pizzeria Mozza, Osteria Mozza, Chi Spacca and Mozza2Go.

Pizzette will join about six other vendors at the Citizen Public Market.