“Best Bet” set to open in March of 2023
By Dolores Quintana
Chef Jason Neroni’s Best Bet will be coming to Culver City in March of 2023 as reported by Eater Los Angeles. While Neroni is most famous on the Westside for The Rose Venice, he also owns B Side Pizza in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, where he’s been slinging wood-fired pizzas for eight years.
Neroni announced Best Bet in 2019, but the pandemic interfered with the plan to open the spot in 2020. A worldwide pandemic has affected so many restauranteurs and definitely would put a crimp in the style of anyone who wanted to open in 2020. According to Eater Los Angeles, rumors have been circulating that Neroni’s plans included pizzas in a Tokyo style, but Eater asked the chef and he has no idea where those tales got started.
As quoted by Eater Los Angeles, Neroni explained how he changed and updated the famous A-Frame building that formerly housed chef Roy Choi’s A-Frame restaurant, “It had definitely seen its time. It had been through an IHOP, a Mexican restaurant, and then [Roy Choi’s] A-Frame. It really needed to be rebirthed. We gutted the entire thing, took it down to the bones, and beyond the bones. We framed it, redid the roof, and added new plumbing and electrical. It’s a very personal journey for me and my family. We designed every nut and bolt, every table and bar fixture.”
The chef also told Eater Los Angeles more about the planned menu for Best Bet, “We’ve been working on [the menu] for three-and-a-half years. I have a deep love for pizza and I really wanted to do something I truly loved and believed in.” Neroni considers Best Bet to be a restaurant that serves pizza rather than a pizza restaurant and it will serve both ten and 20-inch pizzas. The ten-inch pies will be wood-fired and the bigger 20-inch pies will get the New York-style prep. Other styles that Neroni will feature at Best Bet are fried Montanara-style pies and the Silician style which has a more focaccia type of crust.
Another part of the plan is to directly source authentic ingredients from Italy. This will be much easier since Neroni has a home in Italy. You can count on finding pizzas with salumi that are uncommon in the United States and burrata from the Puglia region. According to Eater, customers can expect short ribs, rotisserie lamb shoulder and binchotan grilled meat in addition to three or four new kinds of pasta that Neroli wants to create for the restaurant.
