My friend told me about a relatively new “pizza” place called Riva in Santa Monica. I put pizza in quotes because in my mind a pizza place is like a parlor. This, however, was no parlor. Rather it was a posh and fancy restaurant that happened to have pizza as its specialty.
We took the bar-style seats that had a perfect view of the preparation area and the wood-burning oven. While sitting there, it was really unnecessary to look at the menu, because we could decide what we wanted based on what we saw in front of us.
In this case, I took a slight deviation from my usual unvegan pizzas. Instead of getting the meaty offering, I got the Patate Semplice, which is just a fancy Italian way of saying potato, rosemary, fontina and sea salt pizza.
In the meantime, I enjoyed the appetizer of Wood Fired Pizza Bread. With olive oil, it tasted pretty good, but almost seemed silly to order a partial pizza as I was waiting for a real pizza. Nonetheless, the wait was quite short, as I watched my pizza go in the oven mere moments before it was pulled out fully cooked.