One of my favorite new places for pizza in Los Angeles is a wooden table in a corner of the back patio of a coffee shop off Pico Boulevard started by a former management consultant who was briefly a vegan. Talking about pop-ups in L.A.
can invoke a sort of ridiculous but all-too-familiar discussion particular to Californians . (Remember that “Saturday Night Live” skit that mocked our insistence on sharing driving routes complete with freeways and exits in every conversation?) I felt like a Californian trying to describe my recent pop-up restaurant visits to a friend: I ordered over Instagram DM, paid via Zelle and then I met the chef in the Albertson’s parking lot in Tujunga under the big sign across from the In-N-Out. He told me to look for the black Mini Cooper with a red stripe.
That pizza I brought over for dinner on Saturday with the 25% whole-grain crust? I ordered it over email, paid via Venmo and picked it up from that bagel shop in Silver Lake. The pizza chef, who worked on the culinary department for a bunch of Food Network cooking shows, is friends with the bagel shop owner. You get the idea.
But with limited availability, online preorders, precise pick-up instructions and a little mystery built in, comes great reward. Mievè Mievè, pronounced “mee-vay,” sets up shop in the back corner of Kiff Kafe coffee shop and restaurant in West Los Angeles Wednesday through Saturday evenings. Park in the cafe’s lot, under the monstrous mural of two round-bellied.
