Since Ed LaDou got his first pizza-making job in 1975, a single thought has dominated his thinking: “I wonder what that would taste like on pizza.”
LaDou said he always believed that foods other than pepperoni and sausage would taste good baked on a skin of dough, and that curiosity led him to mingle mozzarella with smoked salmon, beef marrow, tripe and crawfish tails, making him an early entrant in the gourmet-pizza movement of the 1980s.
As LaDou celebrates 20 years as chef-owner of the Caioti Pizza Café concept, now in Studio City, Calif., topping options such as flax seed, rapini, truffle oil and pine nuts on his current menu confirm that his creative juices still are flowing. A tireless pursuit of new flavor combinations has made his career an ongoing adventure, he said.
“I would have to say I’ve been very blessed in that time,” said LaDou, 51. “The relationships I’ve made and the experiences I’ve had are unique to what I’ve been able to do. I’ve been able to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it and how I wanted to do it.”
Caioti, like the animal after which it’s named, has proved to be a survivor in metropolitan Los Angeles, one of the country’s fiercest restaurant markets. In 1987, the first Caioti opened in Laurel Canyon to rave reviews and long lines. When waiting lists evolved into reservations booked three weeks out, LaDou opened a second location on Sunset Boulevard.
The second Caioti was as busy as the first until a dispute broke out in the community over the validity of its business permit and alcohol license. When LaDou’s defense of his business sapped his energy and drained much of the profit from his first store, he closed the second unit.
“If it had it to do again, I would never have taken that battle and fought it,” LaDou said. “I’d have gone and gotten another location.”
Following a dream to create “neighborhood restaurants,” LaDou moved Caioti to comparably quiet Studio City in 1998. The 30-seat spot featured LaDou and two cooks working a double-deck oven, a four-burner range and a flattop opposite an open window into the dining room. But despite initial plans to make the quaint pizzeria a prototype for others, it remains LaDou’s lone Caioti, with 15 employees and $800,000 in annual sales.
Some of his most memorable achievements were made at restaurants he didn’t own. As Spago’s first pizza maker in 1981, LaDou indulged in the wide and wild range of ingredients procured daily by chef-owner Wolfgang Puck. Among the 250 pizza recipes he created for Spago’s wood-fired oven was the legendary smoked salmon and caviar pie.
While working as a chef-consultant in 1985, LaDou created the first menu for California Pizza Kitchen, a list bearing his most famous creation, the Barbecue Chicken Pizza.
Tony Palombino, owner of three-unit Tony Boombozz Pizzeria in Louisville, Ky., said LaDou’s groundbreaking ideas cleared the way for nontraditional pizza makers like himself.
“He really showed that you can be creative, think outside the box and still be accepted,” said Palombino, whose own menu includes such pizza flavors as chicken fajita, steak and potatoes, and barbecue chicken.
“Pizza wouldn’t be as innovative and exciting without Ed,” he added. “When you meet him, you notice the way he talks about pizza and the industry.… He exudes passion about it.”
Pizzeria Bianco owner Chris Bianco, a James Beard Award-winning chef, said he has never met LaDou, but knows and respects his influence on pizza making. Although Bianco is much more of a traditionalist at the hearth, he said he admires LaDou’s willingness to follow his own vision of how pizza makes sense to him.
“I applaud people who don’t necessarily conform to what everybody else says is accepted,” said Bianco, whose pizzeria is in Phoenix. “I would be remiss if I didn’t say he has made an impression on pizza in this country.”
LaDou said his accomplishments at Spago and CPK helped strengthen Caioti’s late-1980s launch, and that favorable press helped business stay strong. But he warned that even a small measure of fame could be harmful if mishandled.
FACT BOX NAME: Caioti Pizza Café LOCATION: Studio City, Calif. YEAR FOUNDED: 1987 ANNUAL SALES: $800,000 EMPLOYEES: 15 SQUARE FOOTAGE: 1,200 ABUSY NIGHT: $2,200 in sales, 55 percent of which is pizza, the rest is salad and pasta; 100 guests TOP SELLER: Pizza Salcicia, with sausage, mushrooms, pine nuts, Gorgonzola and basil NUMBER OF PIZZA RECIPES: “Oh, it’s well into the hundreds now.” FAVORITE PIZZA TOPPING: cooked tripe
“Critical acclaim is always short-lived,” he said. “And it’s never good if it goes to your head. You’ve got to stay focused on the business.”
Caioti’s 20th birthday party is slated for late June and may take place at a nearby theater. LaDou said he wants to hire a band and may sell tickets to the event to generate money for charity.
He also is creating a special menu featuring old favorites now removed from the menu, including the Triple Fettuccini, for which the pasta is boiled, fried and then baked with marinated tomatoes, zucchini, Gruyère cheese and balsamic vinegar; and Yankee Soul Food, featuring macaroni baked with Gruyère, mozzarella and smoked gouda topped with “Southern Comfort gravy” and served with pickle spears garnished with goat cheese. Several pizzas from the past will return as well.
“I look back at those dishes like old friends,” LaDou said. “They move away and you haven’t seen them for a while, but you remember them fondly. You wonder what it would be like today, and then you make it again and think, ‘That was great.’ ”
