{"id":387991,"date":"2026-07-06T15:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T15:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/387991\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T15:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T15:58:11","slug":"los-angeless-best-new-pizzeria-might-not-be-here-in-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/387991\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles\u2019s Best New Pizzeria Might Not Be Here in a Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to cooking talent, I think few people can deny chef Joshua Skenes\u2019s ability. A meal I had years ago at his then three-Michelin-starred Saison<\/a> in San Francisco, which began as a pop-up in 2009, ranks in my top five of all time; the \u201cfire beet in the sky,\u201d a smoky, sweet whole beet topped with molten marrow, lives rent-free in my head.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m just as excited about his latest project in Los Angeles, Lynx<\/a>, which my colleague Ben Mesirow described as part avant-garde art project, part new-school pizzeria, and part cocktail den. After I visited in late April, I was reminded of Skenes\u2019s brilliance, particularly his ability to reinvent familiar dishes in an indelible fashion (a visit last week confirmed everything about my first experience). I hope it can leave a lasting mark on Los Angeles\u2019s dining scene \u2014 but given Skenes\u2019s track record in LA, I just want it to stick around.<\/p>\n

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In 2019, Skenes opened Angler, his first restaurant in Los Angeles<\/a>; it quickly became one of my favorites. The crispy architectural marvel of the Angler potato, the \u201cbleeding\u201d radicchio<\/a> salad, roasted prawns, and soft serve topped with embered caramel<\/a> remain core memories for me. But Angler closed a few years later<\/a>, largely due to the pandemic and the restaurant\u2019s poor location on the ground floor of the Beverly Center (the San Francisco original remains open).<\/p>\n

Skenes moved on to open Leopardo in Los Angeles in mid-2024<\/a>, showcasing his take on neo-Neapolitan pizza baked in an oven that turned faster than a record player, spitting out puffy-crusted pies that were so marvelous that my friend Raphael Brion, then restaurant editor at Food and Wine, considered it one of his best dishes of 2024<\/a>. I ended up going to Leopardo an inordinate number of times, and we considered it for an Eater Award<\/a> \u2014 until Leopardo, too, very quietly closed in 2025.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Skenes opened Happies Hand Made in Los Angeles\u2019s Arts District<\/a>, initially oriented around a McDonald\u2019s cheeseburger-like burger \u2014 but miles better. Then weeks later, the restaurant pivoted to chile-dusted chicken tenders and crisp waffles. But I, along with many of Skenes\u2019s acolytes, adored Happies, until it closed without much warning after just a few months. Skenes says both Leopardo and Happies were projects he did as \u201cfavors for a friend,\u201d but the explanation feels like there\u2019s something he\u2019s unable to tell me. Still, he says he\u2019s all in on Lynx, the first Los Angeles project that he feels confident attaching his name to.<\/p>\n

Located in the former Happies space, Lynx feels like an improved version of Leopardo (Skenes seems to love cats, but he regularly keeps his cute French bulldog in the dining room). The pizzas, which are baked on a conveyor belt oven one might see in Domino\u2019s (according to Skenes, one of the \u201cbest ovens out there\u201d), have a structure lighter than pan de cristal (a Spanish high-hydration loaf that shatters like glass, hence the name), meaning one person could easily house their own pie. A Singapore chile crab pizza (when available) is an ingenious mashup, while the paper-thin raw white mushroom version dusted with snow-like Vacche Rosse Parmesan is another stroke of brilliance. According to Skenes, he\u2019s engineered a pizza dough that no one else really makes, and I agree.<\/p>\n

Inventive cocktails, which were a highlight at Leopardo, work better in Lynx\u2019s lounge ambience, with its magenta lighting and spaced-out seating \u2014 though the restaurant shares space with the next-door Tatsu Ramen (there\u2019s no hard wall between the two), which makes the vibe a bit strange. It all works if you\u2019re okay with people slurping down ramen in the other dining room. The restaurant has already faced early challenges \u2014 Lynx had oven issues and didn\u2019t serve pizza for weeks at a time, without any notice.<\/p>\n

Still, Michelin awarded Lynx a Bib Gourmand after just two months of service. And considering the newfound aspiration pizzerias seem to have garnered nationally, the humble pizza pie could very well be a thing that leads Skenes back into the mainstream culinary conversation.<\/p>\n

\"Person<\/a><\/p>\n

Cocktail in progress. Digital Style House<\/p>\n

My conundrum with Lynx is that it\u2019s become difficult to rely on Skenes to keep a restaurant in the same shape for long. He\u2019ll face the same challenges with staffing, rent, and other annoyances that hit anyone operating in Los Angeles. There continue to be hiccups. A friend who flew in to try Lynx was told last Saturday that the restaurant was hit with another \u201cmechanical issue\u201d and had to close for the night (they were promised a free meal on the next visit). I asked Skenes later over text why it closed, and he said some staff members were unavailable due to illness and that Lynx was reopening this weekend. Coming off Skenes\u2019s meteoric rise from a pop-up<\/a> to three Michelin stars at Saison<\/a>, Leopardo was supposed to be a transition from the fine dining world into the casual realm<\/a>. Over a year later, at Lynx, he\u2019s working through that transition but insists the restaurant is \u201chere to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, since moving to Los Angeles, Skenes has created a fanbase of true believers, who chase him like a beloved fashion designer or artist<\/a>. They\u2019re endlessly willing to accept whatever difficulties and annoyances there might be to participate in his latest project. Chefs like Skenes tend to deploy their skills in the highest echelon of fine dining, charging absurd amounts to serve a few people. Look at Jordan Kahn, Ren\u00e9 Redzepi, or Dominique Crenn. Yet Happies was priced like fast food, and Lynx doesn\u2019t run more than $75 a person \u2014 certainly attainable for many LA diners. Skenes asserts this model is sustainable and profitable. He also promises changes to come: longer hours, more days of operation, non-pizza appetizers, and (scoop!) a new West Los Angeles location with a wood-fired oven.<\/p>\n

If Lynx can remain in its form for a few years, heck, even a decade, Skenes might be able to pull off the ultimate form of restaurant glory: legacy. I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s necessarily Skenes\u2019s motivation, but at least his stakeholders \u2014 workers, investors, and customers \u2014 would appreciate their return on investment (both financial and emotional) and maybe get some world-class bites of pizza along the way. He\u2019s finally forthcoming about his commitment to Lynx, and says he\u2019s happy being back in the kitchen doing what he loves most. Let\u2019s just hope that the balky oven can stay on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to cooking talent, I think few people can deny chef Joshua Skenes\u2019s ability. A meal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[21633,48,52,51,9146,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-387991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-highly-opinionated","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-la-restaurant-openings","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}