Coal Fired Brick Ovens in Calif.?

I fell in love with the coal fired brick oven pizza while working in New York. Now that I am in California I can't find one any where. Does anyone know of a pizza place in So. Cal. that has coal fired brick oven? Thanks.

There's gotta be. Such places are common in NoCal. There's even a chain, Amici's, with outlets in Dublin, Mountain View, Redwood Shores, San Francisco (2), San mateo and San Rafael. Maybe they're in SoCal too.

Maybe the best-known independent place is Tommasso's which claims to have one of the first wood-fired brick pizza ovens in this country. And you may get Francis Ford Coppola cooking your pizza (you SoCal types appreciate these celebrity connections, I think)--he's been known to work out such skills in their kitchen.

I've never been to Amici's in California but their homepage clearly pictures a wood-burning (not coal fired) pizza oven.
Seems like I remember reading a while back that nobody makes a coal-fired oven any more,so a pizzeria would have to find an existing one (as at a couple places in NYC) or build their own.

quote:

Originally posted by Billfish

I've never been to Amici's in California but their homepage clearly pictures a wood-burning (not coal fired) pizza oven.
Seems like I remember reading a while back that nobody makes a coal-fired oven any more,so a pizzeria would have to find an existing one (as at a couple places in NYC) or build their own.

You are right. I didn't notice the insistence on coal-firing. Personally, I'd think wood-fired would be preferable. Anybody coal-fire their BBQ? Whatever flavor the fuel source imparts to the pizza, I'm pretty sure I'd prefer wood smoke taste to coal smoke taste. But I suspect the real difference is imparted by the bricks, not the fuel. Brick ovens just make for great baked goods with excellent crustiness.

You probably will have trouble finding coal-firing in CA because, owls aside, there aren't any coal mines that I know of nor even coal-fired power plants like in the east and midwest. Nor is coal a common source of residential heating or anything else. In other words, I'm not even sure you'd be able to get coal for it if you had one and you'd need a place to store the coal.