Rock & Roll Pizza

Sponsor – 20th Annual LA Music Awards

Address
13816 Princeton Ave, Moorpark, California 93021
Hours
Mon-Tue:
4:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Wed:
11:00 am – 10:00 pm
Thu:
11:00 am – 11:00 pm
Fri-Sat:
11:00 am – 11:45 pm
Sun:
11:00 am – 9:00 pm
Short Description
Pizza Restaurant and Concert Venue! To get a gig here, Please stop by OPEN MIC EVERY Thursday at 7 pm If you are a Touring act, Email David@Redballs.com
Long Description
Wanna Play Here?… Open Mic is how we audition and familiarize new acts with our stage, backline and venue. We get many HUGE musicians ( Taylor Hawkins, Sonny Mone, Jerry Donahue, Matt Malley and Many More… ) that show up at our OPEN MIC so please don’t feel that it is “beneath you” to play an open mic!… Stop by with your guitar, Plug in to our state of the art Backline and lets hear what you have got!… Every Thursday night at 7:00 PM!

Redballs Rock & Roll Pizza in Moorpark, a dynamic little spot with great food and, yes, enormous 20-inch New York-style thin-crust pizzas. If you drive a Mustang or anything like it, that pizza box won’t fit in the front or back seats and barely makes it into the trunk. So, OK, just get it delivered.

But then you wouldn’t get to enjoy Redballs R & R Pizza’s decor, which is, along with the Hoboken sausage and peppers wedge, a high point of the experience.

The faces of rock musicians from the last 30 years look down from walls papered with black-and-white concert posters, music magazine covers and clips, backstage passes, tickets, band photos and other memorabilia from the owner’s 20 years of collecting. Lighting fixtures are snare drums suspended from the ceiling like chandeliers. The floor is done in hexagonal black-and-white tiles reminiscent of the East Village. And the tables are each covered in a different pattern of black, white and red — polka dot, plaid, stripes.

Behind the counter you’ll usually see a guy who fits right in with the music-biz aesthetic. Clothed in pizza-cook whites, he’s wearing an enormous tam that covers a head full of dreads. Meet David Vieira, who not only owns Redballs Rock & Roll Pizza, but also co-owns, with his wife, Petra, the shop next door — Redballs, a well-known purveyor of stage wear for rock musicians (leather jackets for the likes of X and the Misfits).

The pizza joint is the love child born of a conversation between Vieira and Elliot Easton, guitarist for the rock group the Cars. The two friends, former New Yorkers, used to bemoan the dearth of good pizza in their part of the Valley — until Vieira decided to do something about it. He moved his clothing retail outlet from Universal CityWalk to this spot on Topanga Canyon Boulevard across from Westfield Topanga mall and, persevering through a two-year start-up process, opened Rock & Roll Pizza last December.

Vieira enlisted chef Danny Harold (originally from Massapequa, Long Island, more recently a chef to show-biz folk) to create recipes that would evoke the back-East pizzerias he and Easton missed so much. He then turned his design talents to transforming the tiny storefront.

PIZZA, mostly thin crust, by the slice or by the pie, is the centerpiece of the menu. It’s great stuff. The crust is flavorful, yeasty and fragrant, blistered on the bottom with a bit of char and just-crisp edges. The tomato sauce is light, loose and garlicky, cheeses are good quality and laid on with a light hand so the nearly-naked Manhattan (mozzarella and tomato sauce) pie is a delicate fusion of layers, not gooey.

Pizzas are named for New York neighborhoods and landmarks: The Sheepshead Bay has anchovies, mushrooms, olives and onions; the Bronx White tops ricotta and mozzarella with sauteed spinach, mushrooms and a little olive oil and garlic. But the menu’s not slavishly East Coast: The signature Baja 1000 pizza, for example, one of six offered by the slice, has Pasilla chiles, jalapenos and cilantro.

Everything’s made to order, so settle in and enjoy the bootleg concert tapes, classic rock movies or vintage TV shows (“Hullabaloo,” anyone?) on the flat screen and nurse a soda or an espresso while your food’s prepared.

Pasta sauces are house-made daily; the marinara’s light and pleasantly herby. Meatballs are dense and yummy, a spicy combination of pork and beef. They’re great with ziti or rigatoni but better in the Massapequa meatball sandwich, here a real symphony — oops, rock opera — of flavor, the meatballs topped with sauteed mushrooms and garlic, then lightly sauced and cheesed.

And then there are those wedges. A wedge, for uninformed SoCal natives, is a sandwich made by forming pizza dough into a convenient bun shape, baking it, then slicing and filling it, and warming it again to melt the cheese. No, it’s not a calzone. It’s more rustic, messier and more delicious. You can get a wedge made with chicken Parmesan, or one that’s a version of Philly cheese steak (with or without the marinara). The Hoboken sausage and peppers wedge is like something Frank Sinatra might have eaten as a young man. Or Elliot Easton. Slices of sweet Italian sausage, wine-sauteed green peppers and onions and a whisper of mozzarella cheese between just-baked layers of dough (“How dark do you want it?” the cook asks) — heavenly.
susan.latempa@latimes.com

Redballs Rock & Roll Pizza

Location: 6551 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Woodland Hills; (818) 348-1524.

Price: Pizza, slices, $2 to $3, 20-inch pies, $14 to $23; wedges and heroes, $7 to $9 individual, $20 family size; pasta $8 to $9 individual, $20 family size; salads, $3 to $7 individual, $10 family size.

Best dishes: Manhattan pizza, Baja 1000 pizza, Massapequa meatball hero, Hoboken sausage and peppers wedge.

Details: Open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; open until 11 p.m. daily during the summer.
General Information
Entertainment 7 days a week!… Monday Night Poeina Suddarth, Tuesday Night DJ and Car Show, Wednesday Night The Gary Ballen Sing a Long, Thursday Night OPEN MIC, Friday Night Robbie Rists K-TEL 70;s Party!, Saturday Nights Bands, Sunday Night Sonny Mone ( Crazy Horse ) Bike Night Sing a Long… See You Here!
Price Range
$$
Parking
Parking Lot
Public Transit
Metrolink or Amtrak to Moorpark Station
Phone
(818) 348-1524
Email
David@redballs.com
Website
http://www.rockandrollpizza.com/