Tom’s review:

Casa Bianca Pizza

Casa Bianca is located at 1650 Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock. This stretch of Colorado has become quite the destination for good food over the past few years. You will find Milk Farm, Lemongrass Café, Oinkster, and many other good places to eat or to buy food. For those of you who do not know Eagle Rock, it is the area where you will find Occidental College, one town west of Pasadena. This is a cash only restaurant (they do have an ATM).

This was not fine dining by any means, but who wants fine dining when in search of a great pizza. Red and white checkered tablecloths topped with placemats and then a piece of glass adorned each table. Naugahyde booths line the perimeter of the main dining room. Definitely South Philadelphia (or little Italy in any East Coast city) vibes.

I will start out simply by saying that I give this place two thumbs up (would be higher if I had more thumbs).

The caprese salad was solid. The tomatoes were ripe, fresh and at room temperature. The mozzarella was fresh with nice acidity. The drizzled olive oil and balsamic vinegar were nice touches. There could have been a lot more basil. What basil there was became lost in a bed of lettuce and red onion on top of which everything else was plated. Not your classic caprese, but clearly more of a salad than most.

The arancini (served only Friday and Saturday) was very good. Arancini is basically a ball of fried risotto with its origins in Sicily. Chefs can add all types of seasonings, cheeses and other add-ons. The first one of two arancini had a great crunchy texture, saffron evident but not overdone, not too much cheese, and an amazing homemade sausage with a hint of anise. The second arancini was flavored with pesto and was underwhelming compared to its partner. This dish came with a very basic tomato sauce that was a perfect accompaniment for the sausage arancini, but I would eat the pesto arancini without sauce in order to nuance the pesto flavor from the dish.

Fettucine Alfredo was next. The original Italian dish is more like something you would quickly put together for a college meal – butter, parmesan cheese and pasta water for emulsification, all served on fresh fettucine under the name fettucine al burro. When the dish made it to America in the 1920s the chefs added cream, garlic and more cheese. I do not usually order this dish because it tends to become an over-cheesed clump of gluttony. This version, however, worked well. The texture of the pasta was perfect, the noodles maintained their individual integrity, and the sauce was smooth and flavorful but not too heavy. The addition of the sundried tomatoes added a pop of acidity that really put this dish over the top.

We ordered a white pizza and a traditional red sauced pizza with sundried tomatoes. The white pizza had all of the colors of the Italian flag generously placed on top of the pie in the form of tomato, basil and Ricotta (lots of it) cheese. With the large amount of cheese on this pie it would benefit from the addition of fresh tomato and spinach.

The basic pizza with a New York crust, grated mozzarella cheese, tomato, tomato sauce and sundried tomato was spectacular. The crust was amazing. Fresh dough was twirled or rolled out in a manner that left the bottom slightly irregular. Why does that matter? The answer is in the texture. While the whole of the crust was nicely crunchy, those ridges that stood out just a little more added an even finer and more delicate layer of crunch to the texture. The cheese was not only thoroughly melted but also nicely browned in spots. The tomatoes and sauce had a satisfying balance of acidity and sugar that complimented the slightly salty and rich cheese. The differences in the exterior crust were notable. The white pizza had a more pronounced ring of outer crust while the sauce and cheese were applied almost to the outer edge of the crust on the traditional pizza.

I highly recommended a visit to this restaurant. It really has that neighborhood pizza joint feel , the prices are reasonable and the food and service is amazing. The desserts all look good, but next time, you will find me around the corner at Fosters Freeze for a good old fashioned cone of vanilla frozen custard dipped in a hard chocolate shell (assuming I have not eaten too much of the great pizza).

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Damian’s review:

Unreasonably edgy noir photo of the restaurant’s exterior. My sordid trio, in the dead of the L.A. night, lurched tremulously toward the sorry Eagle Rock haunt—our one and only Casa Bianca Pizza Pie—drowning, as we were, in a psychologically torturous cesspool of anxiety and avidity…

I am no food critic. My experience in restaurant criticism derives solely from a middle-school article that specialized more in feverishly extravagant descriptions of the ambiance and present social dynamics than any actual cuisine. Hindered further by my vegetarianism, I’m in scarcely any position to assess Italian-American dining for The Tech; yet, last Thursday the 26th was I appointed by Mannion himself to do this exactly at Casa Bianca Pizza Pie, in the nearby suburb of Eagle Rock.

For this am I to abandon, with scant regard, my typically herbivorous ways? Resort to that same 7th-grade strategy of assessing anything but the food itself? (1) Yes, for I’m a dietary crook; and (2) We shall see, for I shall try. I try. Mannion and I were joined also by one Ephraim Slamka, prepared to offer valuable culinary insights of their own. (Thank you, dear.)

The Italian decor upon entering was charmingly authoritative, with images of classical art, pop stars, monuments, and maps of subregions lining every available crack and crevice. “Splendid Italy!” the tablecloth read—and splendid this pocket of Italy is indeed, especially given those Hadean lows set by Mannion’s previous outing. (Go never to Settebello, that monument to pizza disaster.)

Our first good omen: the bread, warm and fluffy and outfitted with a profusion of butter packets. I have little more to say on this matter. It was bread and it was incredible.

Our first non-bread dish: the caprese, served notably like a typical salad. While I’m used to alternating chains of mozzarella and tomato slices, this was a bowl of those ingredients plus lettuce and red onion. We three were all supportive of the onion’s inclusion, with its subtle sharpness an agreeable companion to the sweetness of the tomatoes and creaminess of the mozzarella.

We proceeded with our two balls of arancini: “I don’t know which is which because they deep-fried them,” explained the waitress, though some solid investigative journalism with a knife revealed which was the pesto and which the sausage. Either was a cozy fusion of rice and breadcrumb, yet the former—Ephraim agreed—felt more coherent thanks to the cheese. (The pesto was frankly difficult to notice.)

I shamefully enjoyed the latter ball, the sole item for which I actually had to forgo my vegetarianism, and its welcome protein due to the sausage. A helping of the partnering tomato sauce drowned either arancini into an unnuanced but wonderful mélange of carbs.

Side Bathroom Review—Drenched in graffiti and clumsy etchings from Eagle Rock ne’er-do-wells, these dirtied walls had seen much better days. The toilet was working, however; I thus deem it a satisfactory restroom experience. So concludes this side bathroom review.

Next came our pizzas, a red and a white. The former was thin, crispy, ensnared in cheese but not too greasy: a triumph, which I say particularly as a red-pizza lover. White pizza I generally love less, though it was also quite nice; the ricotta, however, was likely an excessive addition, though for that are we expressly to blame. The sprinkling of tomato pieces and basil brought some summery refreshment. (In Ephraim’s words: “I would not kill a man for it—or a woman, or a child, or another nonbinary person for that matter—but this is very good pizza.”)

Closing the meal, a bowl of fettuccini alfredo with sun-dried tomatoes. Fettuccini can be exceedingly monotonous as far as Italian carby gauntlets go, but Ephraim and I both found it a reasonable balance of salt, cream, and cheese.

I was following all this carby hedonism eager to submerge into a Stygian sleep: the signature consequence of a thoroughly delectable evening of Italian-American cuisine. Casa Bianca shall surely see me again within its hallowed halls, and I shall be grateful for all my future meals there just as I am for that noblest of men who introduced me to its vittles. Godspeed Tom Mannion, and godspeed Casa Bianca Pizza Pie.