Kuro Artisanal Pizza

Many years ago, Japanese interpretations of Italian and American pizzas tended to be bizarre – seemingly the result of pre-internet restaurants trying to replicate what they’d seen in photos using approximated ingredients. But after Japanese pizzaiolos devoted themselves to learning and mastering classic Neapolitan techniques, their recipes and execution quickly improved, yielding truly outstanding and sometimes unique results. Costa Mesa’s Kuro Artisanal Pizza is the direct product of that culinary evolution, having beaten Fountain Valley’s similarly inspired Ini Ristorante to the Japanese-Italian fusion pizza concept by a year (though both lagged Southeast Asian chain Pizza 4P’s by around a decade).

Founded in late 2021 at The LAB, Kuro’s jet black space is not so much a restaurant as an ordering counter with spaces for condiments and merch, leveraging outdoor common tables and chairs to accommodate guests. The menu’s only options are pizzas – all the same 12″ size, each pie sliced into quarters – and the one-page list has varied from six to 10 choices. There were 10 on our visit, starting with a $15 white cheese pizza and climbing to $23 for red or white pizzas with Italian prosciutto, garlic, and pesto on top. While the choices have changed over time, they tend to cover bases such as four cheese, meat-and-cheese, margherita, tomato sauce-less white pizza, and Japanese-influenced white and red sauce variants. One of the surprising pizzas on the menu, Julio ($17), combined mashed potatoes, bacon, pesto, and cheeses – an unusual collection of ingredients that we wished we’d had enough appetite to try. Other surprises are more subtle: Kuro’s red sauce contains fish to balance its flavor, and its garlic confit uses koji for fermentation, Japanese-inspired seasoning tricks that are flagged on the menu; vegan-friendly red sauce is offered as an alternative if requested.

Despite some semi-humorous, semi-serious signage (“sorry no slices, no ranch, no pineapple”) and instructions on how to eat its slices (fold or fork/knife it), Kuro isn’t a stodgy place. Skull light fixtures, black wolf logos, and edgy font choices seem to reflect the design sensibilities of a horror movie fan who also loves music, leather jackets, and pizza. Kuro’s friendly owners interact with guests and seem genuinely enthusiastic about their work, coming out from behind the counter to hand over pizzas after 20-ish-minutes of cooking and boxing. Every pizza arrives in a box with napkins, and though there are no plates, guests can find silverware, chili pepper dispensers, and other seasoning shakers inside.