Pizza Pioneer Ed LaDou was 52

Hard to believe now, but not too long ago people just didn't put gourmet ingredients on pizza. It just wasn't something you did.

Ed LaDou wasn't the first chef to break that rule. But he was most responsible for bringing the new, California-themed gourmet pizzas to the masses: First at Spago, then at California Pizza Kitchen and finally, at his own Caioti.

I remember several years ago, banners around town touted famous creations that originated in Southern California -- including barbecue chicken pizza. LaDou, who passed away Dec. 27, was instrumental in what's now a pizza staple.

From the L.A. Times obit:

"Ed really set the tone for the pizza," said Mark Peel, a former chef at Spago who now owns Campanile in Los Angeles. "Wolfgang had a great sense of taste, but he was not a pizza maker by any means. Ed was highly skilled, fast and clean; he was an intelligent guy who made a great, great crust. There are people who have built empires on less."

By the mid-1970s LaDou was working at restaurants in San Francisco, where he was known as an experienced pizza maker given to experimentation, topping pizzas with items such as eggplant and clams. Such experimentation was not always welcomed by his bosses, David Kamp wrote in his 2006 book, "The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation," but it appealed to diners, including one who would change the future of pizza.

One day while dining at Prego in San Francisco, Puck tried a LaDou original -- pizza topped with ricotta cheese, red peppers, pâté and mustard. Puck offered him a job in his yet-unopened restaurant in Los Angeles.

In January 1982, Spago opened with LaDou as pizza chef, carrying out the visions of Puck. There was pizza topped with smoked salmon and pizza topped with duck sausage. Puck also allowed LaDou to select toppings.

"It was like being an artist who'd worked with 10 colors all of his life and then got to use 300," LaDou once said.

The success of Spago was stunning. The Hollywood crowd, the rich and famous, packed the place to eat pizza made by LaDou.

"That was his pizza program," Nancy Silverton, who was pastry chef at Spago, said in an interview Thursday. "Wolf certainly gave Ed the toppings that he wanted, but it was Ed that ran that department single-handedly in the beginning. . . . I think Ed definitely got a kick out of all of the stars that ate his pizza." She now co-owns Pizzeria Mozza and Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles.

With Spago's food in such high demand, getting a reservation there was tough. That gave two lawyers an idea.

"We saw the success he was having with the pizza up at Spago, so we decided to bring it to the masses," Larry Flax, who in 1985 co-founded California Pizza Kitchen with Rick Rosenfield, said in an interview Thursday.

Flax had taken a pizza-making class from LaDou at Ma Maison in Los Angeles, where Puck was chef before opening Spago. But the attorneys were not cooks. "And so we had Ed come in and work with us at the beginning of the restaurant," Flax said. "You'd have to say Ed was a pioneer in the California style of pizzas from his work with Wolfgang and us."

I'll be thinking of LaDou this weekend, when I try to come up with another offbeat pizza combo (thanks to Trader Joe's pizza dough).