A new restaurant is ready to take up residence at the Americana at Brand in Glendale soon. Named ROCA, it’s expected to open Memorial Day weekend with a shortened menu of Roman-style slices and more, all backed by a couple of big names in the LA pizza scene.
The new Roca, which will take over the former Tsujita at the Americana (which closed after a four-year run), comes from California Pizza Kitchen co-founder Rick Rosenfield and his partner/wife Esther Rosenfield. The pair already have a prodigious background in popularizing a particular kind of pizza in LA (and beyond), but for this new place they’ve brought on chef Luigi Roditis of Il Romanista in El Segundo to run the show. Fans of Roman-style slices will remember Il Romanista as the basically the first entrant into that market, way back in 2017, before places like Triple Beam Pizza in Highland Park and Oste on West Third Street.
Together the trio plans to toss out airy, crisped pizza to the masses, using local California produce, cheeses, and an imported Italian oven. It’ll be a small and focused menu to start, given the expected busy holiday, with a more robust menu coming down the line, along with on-site dining and delivery. Just a note: This restaurant won’t be permanent, but is running for an unspecified amount of time beginning at the end of this month. Reps for Rosenfield tell Eater that eventually Roca will shift to its own standalone space, including at Caruso’s Waterside development this fall and at another site on the Westside. For now, find Roca’s pizza at the Americana in Glendale as of Memorial Day.