I went to Mozza Pizzeria the other night, somewhat impromptu with a friend.  I was working across the strees and figured I’d give the old walk-in bar myth a try.  At 7pm on a Wednesday night, the place is actually quite pleasant.  No crowds at the door. The bars (wine and wood fire oven) were half-filled, meaning my chances of getting a spot at the bar, sans one month prior to the date reservations, was good.  I waited the 10 minutes for my friend to show which felt like an absolute eternity.  More and more people started filing in.  This included some celebs like Michael J. Fox and his wife, Drew Barrymore and new boyfriend Justin So-and-so.  Of course I really don’t care that much about celebrity sitings.  I only care about one thing- getting a seat.

A learned a couple interesting things that night and tried a couple new things as well.  This was the fourth time i had eaten here, fifth if you count the Osteria next door.  We got the menu and I new I had to have the chicken liver crostini with guanciale.  Basically, I had it in my mind to order anything with guanciale.  The crostini and the pizza with guanciale and egg are delicious.  My bubble was burst when I got the new menu in hand.  All guanciale was replaced with pancetta.  Pancetta!?@!*%@!  How pedestrian.  It was here that I fell in love with it. I  had learned of it when reading the book Heat.  How could they do this to me?  I even hunted down a local source, Silverlake Cheese Store.

Speaking of pedestrian, I don’t drink soda so I wouldn’t know, but apparently they stock glass bottle Coke light, which is the European and Australian formula for “Diet Coke” as opposed to the American, fake sweetener tasting version.  It’s much sweeter and more palatable.  I guess.  I am not a soda connoisseur though but I took my friend’s word for it. 

Of course, my friend Bebe, insisted on being optimistic and said ‘maybe they were tired of explaining what it (guanciale) is and had to dumb the menu down for people’.  uhm sure.  How can one be a true food snob if they can’t even order the most exotic thing on the menu and practice saying the word, that only insiders know?  Well it is true, we were told that guanicale, which is smoked pig jowl and named by the Italian word for pillow, was ‘unavailable’.  With this answer, my friend’s quick retort was ’since when is pig not available year round?’  What quick wit about swine.

As I always say, roll with it.  So I went ahead and ordered the liver crostini anyways.  The pancetta substitute was OK.  Once you have guanciale it is hard to imagine those taste memories without it.  Moving on.  We had the eggplant anitipasti which I found a bit too vinegary though the eggplant was cooked very nicely, not too mushy.  The sausage fennel pizza was good as always and then we both had never had the slow cooked broccoli pizza which was really good albeit a bit too salty, and I love salt.  My obsession for guanciale is a testament to that, saltier, richer, gamier than bacon but not as smoky so it doesn’t over power the food.  A small bit of it does the trick.

I tried googling this issue, but no one seemed bothered by it.  Well I am.  I did some further investigating and found all sorts of interesting info including a recipe on how to make it on the Babbo site and Batali’s father’s Salumi shop in Seattle, where next to the word “guanciale” it says “available periodically”  Interesting.