There’s California-style pizza and Detroit-style pizza, but if you combine the two, is it really a new style? That’s what restaurateur Alex Sohn is shooting for at Seven Tigers Pie Club in Los Angeles.
Sohn tops his Detroit-style crusts with L.A.-inspired toppings to spawn a hybrid pizza “best described as a gourmet stoner’s delight,” according to TimeOut. On Seven Tigers Pie Club’s website, the keyword is #supercrust.
Los Angelenos “lack a food culture of our own on America’s best-consumed products, which are bagels and pizza,” Sohn told Eater Los Angeles. He tackled the former with his Korean-inspired fare at Calic Bagel, which debuted last fall. For the latter, he collaborated with Noel Brohner of Slow Rise Pizza Co. fame, developing a signature blend of King Arthur flours, fermenting the dough for 48 hours and piling on exotic toppings you won’t find at Buddy’s Pizza, the acknowledged inventor of the Detroit style.
Related: Learn the “Secrets of a 50 Top Pizza Restaurant” in a newly added panel session at PMQ’s Pizza Power Forum, taking place September 4-5 in Atlanta
Launched this April, Seven Tigers Pie Club has sparked media buzz around Los Angeles. In June, the Los Angeles Times hailed the restaurant as one of L.A.’s best pizza spots. “Its signature pizza, the Grand Short Rib, is an ode to Koreatown’s vast KBBQ scene,” that article states. “It involves a galbi-sauce base, tender peppers and onions, pickled jalapeños and a blend of cheddar and mozzarella before topping each slice with fatty, fall-apart morsels of 24-hour-slow-cooked Angus beef short rib. It’s all garnished with a tangle of pa muchim, or scallion salad, and the short rib bone comes resting alongside the pie for a flourish.”
Writing for The Infatuation, Nikko Duren said the square pies at Seven Tigers Pizza Club “look like they were designed by a mad scientist with a marinara obsession.” But the madness works, Duren added. “The tangy, fermented dough has the springiness of a memory foam pillow, a salty blend of cheeses coats each crusty edge, and fun toppings balance classic with creative, like a whole grilled short rib, gochujang pepperoni, and al pastor sausage.”
Sohn told the Los Angeles Times that the city’s denizens “want everything: They want thin crust, they want heavy, they want crispy, they want a lot of toppings, so we’re going to try a lot of things. There will be a lot of people who will be kind of questioning our long journey, but, I mean, that’s the point.”
Indeed, he added, the “hate comments” have already started coming in, with some questioning whether his L.A.-style pizza is really anything more than Detroit-style with a California twist. “But as [Brohner] says, nobody calls it Detroit-style pizza inside Detroit—it’s just regular pizza. It’s just the outsider [who’s] calling it Detroit-style pizza.”
There’s a total of seven pies on the menu (hence the restaurant’s name), including the aforementioned Al Pastor (zesty marinara, al pastor, pineapple, jalapeños, pickled Mexican onions, cilantro, cheddar and mozzarella); the Gochujang Pepperoni (spicy gochujang marinara, pepperoni, garlic oil, cheddar, mozzarella and pecorino Romano); and the Ktown Meatball (spicy gochujang marina, meatballs, fresh mozz and Parmesan). More traditional offerings include the Margherita and the Four Cheese.
Sohn is CEO of ALMG Hospitality, founded in December 2005. It operates a plethora of brands, including Calic Bagel and Calic Bread, Egg Tuck KTown and Egg Tuck Hollywood, MarkEat 8, Milk Tavern and Oppa Juicery.
