Truly Pizza Chooses North Laguna Beach
Planned open early spring 2025
The awesome Truly Pizza is moving on into North Laguna.
This is Truly Pizza’s first expansion from its Dana Point location. They’re taking over the current “3” location by Urth Caffe … we locals, well … we still know that treasured spot as John Madison’s “Madison Square and Garden Cafe.”
Prior to its sale in 2018, we all enjoyed wrangling our way through John’s very eclectic shop, lining up to order his unfathomable Ricotta Pancake, and ducking the endless whirling dervish mobiles and stepping over the assembled army of garden gnomes as we tried to walk – laden with cappuccinos and mimosas – to our outdoor tables.
I’ve got to tell you, I’ve missed the magic of Madison’s, but Truly Pizza has a twinkle all its own.
They plan on putting in about 100 seats.
Truly different pizza
I’ve stopped in three times to the Truly Pizza in Dana Point … fortunately on off days so that I didn’t have to wait in line for an hour … and I’ve got to say, this is TRULY … heh, I didn’t even mean to say that … DIFFERENT pizza.
This creation originally began with John Arena, a 3-generation Pizza-yoLO born and raised in New York. In 1980, he took the family recipe with him to Las Vegas and soon thereafter met Donna Baldwin and they became fast friends. For years they talked about opening their own pizzeria in Southern California, especially after, Donna began calling Laguna Beach home several years ago.
Well, then they thought to talk to World Pizza Champion Chris Decker there in Vegas at Metro Pizza, the dream edged that much closer.
It was only a matter of time before they connected with Steve Muller, a longtime Dana Point developer … and the four decided they must somehow form a family … and they became the Truly Bunch.
World Pizza Champion is at the helm
Now, sorry for a bit of a squirrel here but let’s circle on back to that World Pizza Champion bit … World Pizza Championship takes place … usually in March … at the Las Vegas Convention Center and it is a sight to behold – a combo of pizza everywhere and “Olympic style games” that include “freestyle acrobatic dough tossing,” the fastest pizza box folding and an honest to god “pizza triathlon that you just have to witness with your own eyes.
You’ve got to be invited to even be allowed to compete, so let’s just say Chris Decker has the pizza chops. And when John - New Yorker Pizzayolo - and fellow New Yorker Chris got together to invent a new pizza, they opened a door to heaven.
The crust is like … a hearty croissant … that’s the only way I can explain it. The first time I was there, I ordered the La Foresta pizza - with roasted mushrooms, sausage, mozzarella, fontina and what they call “herbed ricotta” which actually shows up as a whipped spirals of heaven on TOP of the pizza … It’s like one of those whipped cream cans where you can make the spirals on top of your ice cream or in your mouth but THIS was … whipped ricotta cheese in a sort of random mountain range atop the pizza. That, combined with the flaky, croissant like crust - never had anything like that in my life.
I do not think Truly Pizza Laguna Beach is going to have a bad day from Day One.
In fact, this summer, during its SECOND YEAR of operation in that one location, Truly was ranked as one of the top 50 pizzas in the United States by the longtime and worldwide ranking system, “50 Top Pizza.” Only THREE other pizzerias in California made it into that ranking.
Of course, if you’re not a pizza fan, Truly has plenty of options to choose from- they’ve got Italian sandwiches, a host of salads, a stellar charcuterie board and wings … of course.
Oh, and be sure to try their own version of a wine slurpee - sorry to be crass, but I can’t think of another way to describe their frozen white wine with lemonade mix. It’s the best slurpee ever! I think they should seriously negotiate with 7 Eleven to start selling these IMMEDIATELY in every store.
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