A dozen or more hungry pizza lovers may be gathered in front of People Pizzeria in Costa Mesa on any given night, glancing at their phones or craning their necks to watch the action. It’s simple: Since the kitchen occupies more than half of the room, everyone can see one of Orange County’s busiest eateries. Joey Booterbaugh, the chef and proprietor of People, believes that dough is the star of the show, so that is on purpose. He’s just trying to get out of the way.
Booterbaugh is from Palmdale and has worked at some of the best restaurants in Los Angeles, such as Café Birdie, which he opened in Highland Park in 2016. So why did he suddenly leave for the sunny suburbs in 2019?
In this instance, “we” refers to Booterbaugh and his former East Borough companion, Chloe Tran. To use a rustic former wine bar in the back of the Camp, a Costa Mesa shopping center, the couple left their restaurant lives to the north four years ago and started a new journey in Orange County. Their goal was to use the space to create food that would hopefully appeal to a new and unfamiliar dining base.
I thought, “Orange County?” “How is it?” asks Booterbaugh. He at first had no notion of what to anticipate.
Yet he was aware that the location he had visited would serve pizza. Booterbaugh asserts that without a strong concept before entering a room, “you’re basically setting yourself up for failure.” When someone enters your space, they have to consider alternative ideas with which you are competing.
Booterbaugh has spent a lot of time learning about higher-hydration, fermentation-forward pizza, and he saw an opportunity to make sort of funky, tasty pizzas for hundreds of people every night if he could convince them of his idea. “With Neapolitan pizza, there are numerous boxes that must be checked. “The same goes with Detroit pizza,” claims Booterbaugh. Having clear specifications may make it simpler to promote those looks to regular consumers. Our specialty is artisan-style pizza. We don’t check any other style’s boxes. It required time for him to learn new things, as well as for his team and Costa Mesa.
He recalls those early summer 2019 moments: “I was thinking, wow, am I making a mistake?” “I wasn’t receiving the same kind of customer base that I saw at other sites. Until things finally clicked, it took two to three months, and then the epidemic struck.
Over a few days, People transformed from a full-service pan-California restaurant that specialized in carbs and salads to a pizzeria. According to Booterbaugh, who by April 2020 was making 120 pizzas by himself while Tran handled orders and pickups, “COVID converted us into a takeout place.” “This stink right now, but let’s just make the best of it,” I reasoned. Let’s focus on expanding the business now that we have an audience. Let’s simply make some pizza and improve. The timing was ideal for getting reps.
The outcomes are astounding. During the past two or more years, People has grown to be one of Orange County’s most exciting restaurants because of this fuel and the pizza’s somewhat tangy, fermented foundation. There are just four red sauce-based pizzas (and four more white alternatives) on the menu, all of which are topped with familiar ingredients like pepperoni, fennel sausage, and margarita. The distinction, the life, and the evolving nature of people may be found in this process. Booterbaugh has spent years fine-tuning his dough recipe, experimenting with various pre-ferments, altering some characteristics of his sourdough, or increasing the hydration levels (it is currently at 72 percent) depending on the season or his intuition. Everything from the wheat to the rest period to the purveyors is but a piece of a much larger, constantly shifting puzzle.
The best thing about artisanal pizza, according to Booterbaugh, is that you won’t find that pizza anywhere else. Our pizza has improved significantly over the past two months, six months, and a year. It is now a totally new product.
Hail Mary in Atwater Village may be the closest thing to Folks’ pizza in Los Angeles. It uses a unique dough base that changes all the time to make crusty, thick-rimmed pizzas in an old deck oven. Folks’ pizza has a wide, dark edge that is light but filling, like a thin version of the crust on some of the best artisan breads in Southern California. Because there is a lot of gluten development, the base of each pizza is the same size, shape, and strength. Each slice flattens out almost completely in the middle but manages to maintain enough strength to hold its toppings without falling off when touched. Once more, this isn’t Neapolitan, New York-style, Mozza’s own California-style pizza, or anything else, for that matter. It’s me, Folks.
Booterbaugh thinks that his commitment to the pizza ethic is expanding. Never stop learning or improving, keep the menu simple, and maintain a consistent level of productivity. People enjoy and expect meatballs; therefore, he serves them with thick wedges of bread (also cooked in-house), but this does not mean that the meat blended in the recipe must always be the same. Customers also enjoy the darker cornicione bubbles on his pizza, which are a result of working with a Marsal oven that is frequently prone to hot spots and the artisan charm of the dish.
Booterbaugh thinks it’s a special pizza moment. “High-quality pizza is getting more popular in America.” “I understand now,” others say. I have never eaten pizza before. Unique pizza. Most Americans don’t eat pizza outside of New York. Shakey’s taught me to eat pizza. Booterbaugh wants that with people. He lets the bread talk.
There is usually a mob waiting outside the doors before they even open, so word has spread. People want to witness the action firsthand. That represents a significant victory for the original goals of the people, despite some difficulties.
According to Booterbaugh, “On a recent Friday, we did 250 covers, which to the average visitor doesn’t mean anything.” They don’t realize that our oven is too small to simply make takeout on a regular basis. What do you mean you can’t do takeout? They simply ask. You operate a pizzeria,
In the future, there are plans to establish a second full-service People location in another part of Orange County. When Tran and Booterbaugh claim to have established roots in the area, they are serious, according to Booterbaugh. Long Beach is the only area of greater LA that they would even consider at this time, but it seems improbable. Instead, they are content to establish stronger, rather than wider, roots in their new residence. Even with all that talk of expansion, it’s still a way off. One night at a time, they’re just working on improving the Folks they already have. “Many cooks desire to pursue careers in fine dining,” adds Booterbaugh. “My favorite food is pizza. Wow, watching the pizza rise up in the oven is just a fantastic experience. So, we did it once more.
