Uncrustables

Wildcrust (Highland Park)

RESTAURANTS • First Word

In recent years, Los Angeles has become a hotspot for sourdough pizza and pop-ups channeling pandemic-era popularity into permanent setups. For a long time, the city has been home to an outsized number of excellent strip mall restaurants. Highland Park’s Wildcrust, founded and run by a family of Angelenos, checks all three of those boxes, making it a near-guaranteed hit.

Located in a new-build off York Boulevard that also hosts neighborhood hits Fondry and Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill, Wildcrust has many (maybe too many) of the de rigeur modern design touches seen around LA. There are crimson benches, turquoise cabinetry, and napkins; dimmed lighting, lit candles, and communal seating. The soundtrack, early-2000s indie, the vibe, relaxed enough to suggest a long-standing neighborhood favorite.

You could sit here alongside a tower of pizzas and salad, filling in the cracks with the correct bottle of red, and leave truly content. Like the space, however, the menu can feel slightly forced: top-heavy with an unsurprising array of olives, meatballs, and crowd-pleaser salads. We opted for heirloom tomatoes with watermelon and ricotta salt, grilled peaches with burrata, and a Caesar with brown butter bread crumbs, all of which were solid.

The pizza is good, bordering on memorable. The salame piccante and funghi balanced the right proportions of crisp and chewy with just enough flour left on the edges of the Neapolitan-style crust to suggest a personal touch. The signature in-house lamb tzatziki pizza was uniquely delicious, but the feta, Calabrian chili, and mint toppings were unevenly spread, more features than flavors. This was a common problem with the other pies from the evening, too. When the right bite lined up, though, they were great.

Did some initial expectations come down to table level by the time we got the evening’s check? Maybe. But the warm vibe, busy tables, and a seemingly satisfied crowd suggest it’s on track to become a Highland Park fixture. And sometimes, even for a restaurant that checks all the trend boxes, that’s just fine. –James Royce

→ Wildcrust (Highland Park) • 4705 York Blvd • Tue-Sun 5-10p • Reserve.