It’s a bit embarrassing, really, this Ahab-like obsession I've developed. It's my third trek out to Bollini’s Pizzeria Napolitana, a relative newcomer that’s been the talk of the populist food boards since it opened in fall 2007. Another 30-mile drive to Monterey Park, and once again the Bolognese is out.

I'm at the point where, even after savoring an amazing array of pizza, salad and an excellent linguine with wild mushroom, the denial of the house’s signature meat sauce causes me to turn on Christiano Bollini with a “Dude, WTF?”

Did I personally know the hulking chef/owner with the brilliantly-tatted pythons? Hardly. Not that it mattered, because once you step inside this humble sliver of a pizzeria with a single row of tables pressed desperately against the wall, you feel like you’ve known this place and everyone in it forever. A low glass partition is the only demarcation for the open kitchen, better for Bollini or one of his crew to thrust a hand over and give props to exiting diners or locals who won’t fail to say hello as they pick up a pie. On that busy Saturday night, the gracious chef even obliges my insolence, explaining the timing of his Bolognese sauce and how a single 5-gallon batch barely lasts a day’s service—especially since people realized that Bollini’s is not just a place for awesome pizza.

We laugh about it now, as I query him again but with—ahem—journalistic professionalism. “It’s from Grandma, who’s from Bologna,” Bollini explains. “It takes two hours to prep, three hours to cook. It’s been in my family for almost 200 years. She taught my dad, and I used to help her as a child, then my dad taught me. I have their notes. And I’m going to pass that down to my boys.”

Hearing Bollini talk about family and tradition is completely disarming. It’s the very reason that he set up shop in his hometown, just two blocks down from where he grew up. It’s the impetus that moved him to travel around Italy for three years to learn from the motherland—his mastery of Neapolitan-style pizza is just something he "picked up along the way in Napoli”—while still making it back home every few months or so. It’s the instinct that culled a team of childhood friends and entrusted them as pizzaioli. Signature pizzas are named after his family; there’s even one with (gasp!) pineapple and bacon. WTF, Christiano? Hey, the self-respecting Italian knows people who like it. No worries.

Bollini isn’t without fancy kitchen cred, either. He worked under Michael Cimarusti at Water Grill, making his way to sous chef there. He’s on first-name basis with many of L.A.’s celestial beings: “Michael took me to the next level,” he says. “I owe him a lot of praise…as well as Angelo [Auriana at Valentino]. Piero [Selvaggio, also of Valentino] taught me a lot as well.” As for that other buzz-worthy pizza place: “Nancy [Silverton] is a great baker. I think her rendition of what she does is awesome. It’s not typically what I like to do, but what she does is great.”

Not that he’s into name-dropping. He’s hardly the type to hold a candle to set forms of recognition. That’s why—although his paper-thin pizza is pretty much the most flavorful, hands-down redonk pie in town [click here for the anatomy of the redonkulousness]—he doesn’t bother with the official certification set by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. He knows a good pizza when he tastes it (he can also tell whether the dough is a cake yeast, dry active, a starter or malt) and really, so do his fans.

He’s—how does the saying go?—keeping it real. His sense of self is in every part of Bollini’s the Pizzeria. His personal snapshots from his stint in Italy decorate the wall; a high school friend detailed the casing of the wood-burning oven with the family name; a mural (authored by the same friend) of Venice, complete with a bare-chested prostitute, christens the bathroom an “Ass Gasket Factory.” None of that should change, even as plans are already in place to expand the restaurant this year. What's absolutely certain to remain is the massive oven, which required hiring a crane company, blowing out the front wall and blockading Garfield Ave. for its installation. "Yeah," Bollini muses, "that oven's here for life."

Jiyeon Yoo is Restaurants editor for Metromix Los Angeles.

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