A Pitch for Plain

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I blurted as we walked into Pagliacci’s, a place Michael, a proud native of Brooklyn, insisted makes the best New York-style pizza around here.

It really didn’t look promising. Two ordinary gas pizza ovens stood behind a counter strewn with a few slices of cheese pizza. And anyway, most of the customers were ordering yogurt. (We sagely sat in the restaurant’s yogurt parlor, rather than its cramped pizza section.)

But when our 16-inch pizza arrived, it was a purist’s delight: a perfectly cooked medium crust with a perfectly proportioned topping. The gooey whole-milk mozzarella pulled away from the moist crust as we bit in. I noticed Michael seemed to be hoarding his slices.

Would that we had stopped with the plain cheese pizza: Pagliacci’s doesn’t do as well on anything else. The more ambitious pizzas, though blessed with that same delicious crust, were all flawed.

The sun-dried tomato, goat cheese and basil pizza had unappetizing blobs of goat cheese in the center, quickly turning the crust soggy. The pizza bianca, topped with mozzarella, goat cheese, feta, Parmesan and ricotta, was greasy and one-dimensional. The chicken barbecue pizza with jalapenos ended up cloying, because of an overly sugary barbecue sauce.

*

We also tried a few other Italian American dishes, and not many of them were impressive, either. The main ingredient in lasagna Bolognese seemed to be rubbery cheese--we had to dig through sheets of oily pasta to get at the nuggets of meat. The angel hair alla checca was badly overcooked.

The one dish that did pass muster was eggplant parmigiana. The breading was surprisingly light, allowing Pagliacci’s excellent marinara sauce to assert itself.

Because we were already in the yogurt parlor, we made a second shrewd decision: ordering yogurt desserts.

Pagliacci’s takes a low-fat vanilla frozen yogurt, called Whirla Whip, and runs it through a magic machine with your choice of ingredients--fruits, nuts, granolas, crushed candy bars, crumbled cookies. Since there are 30 choices and you can ask for as many as three toppings, the permutations are--well, you do the math.

I was quite content with my vanilla yogurt with raspberries, peaches and Graham crackers, but once again, Michael knew his restaurant. He was digging into a Mystic Mint, Heath Bar and coconut chocolate yogurt . . . and hoarding again. In the end, after a bit of nagging, I got a taste.

They know what they like, those Brooklyn boys.

BE THERE

Pagliacci’s, 4366 Coldwater Canyon Blvd., Studio City. Open 7 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 7 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Beer and wine only. Parking lot. MasterCard and Visa. Dinner for two, $14-$23. Suggested dishes: cheese pizza (10-inch $5.95, 14-inch $9.95, 16-inch $10.95; extra toppings $1, $1.25, $1.45, respectively), custom-blended yogurt, $1.90-$4.95. Call (818) 506-4111.