Ed LaDou
Encyclopedia
Ed LaDou was an American
pizza
chef
, who is credited with popularizing gourmet
California-style pizza
s. Ed LaDou was the first pizza chef at Wolfgang Puck
's Spago restaurant in L.A. He also developed the first menu for the California Pizza Kitchen
.
The invention of the California-style pizza
begins with a Berkeley, California
, pizza restaurant, Chez Panisse
, and its owner, Alice Waters
. Waters was the first to create pizzas with exotic and unusual toppings which were cooked in a wood-burning pizza oven
. However, LaDou was a major figure in the development and popularity of these types of pizzas.
LaDou was known for introducing very unusual ingredients into his pizza recipes at a time when such toppings were highly unorthodox. Examples include duck
breast and hoisin sauce
pizza and barbecue
chicken pizza.
on October 9, 1955. His father, Edward M. LaDou, was a United States Air Force
pilot
and his mother is named Patricia Gallinetti. LaDou was partially raised in Los Altos, California
, and first worked at a restaurant when he was a high school student.
, red pepper
s, pâté
and mustard
and immediately offered him a job at his Spago restaurant in Los Angeles
, which at the time was not open yet.
Spago opened in January 1982 with LaDou as its first pizza chef. Puck allowed La Dou to choose his own toppings and recipes. The original menu
included pizzas topped with duck sausage
or smoked salmon
. LaDou later remarked in an interview about his move to Spago's, "It was like being an artist
who'd worked with 10 colors all of his life and then got to use 300." LaDou's pizzas were highly popular, making reservations at Spago's very hard to get.
LaDou was approached by Larry Flax, who co-founded the California Pizza Kitchen
in 1985 with fellow attorney
, Rick Rosenfield. Flax had previously taken a pizza making course with LaDou at Los Angeles' Ma Maison, where Wolfgang Puck had been a chef immediately prior to opening Spago's. Flax and Rosenfield asked LaDou to help develop a menu for the California Pizza Kitchen. LaDou accepted and developed the restaurant chain's first menu, which included the CPK's signature barbecue chicken pizza. The California Pizza Kitchen became a success and now has restaurants across the United States
and worldwide.
LaDou left California Pizza Kitchen shortly after developing its menu. He eventually opened his own restaurant, called Caioti, which first opened in Laurel Canyon
before moving to its current location in Studio City, California.
LaDou was invited by the Smithsonian Institution
to demonstrate his pizza techniques at the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival
in Washington D.C. in 2005.
at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California
, on December 27, 2007, at the age of 52. He was survived by his wife, Carrie LaDou, and their daughter, Cassidy Rose.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
pizza
Pizza
Pizza is an oven-baked, flat, disc-shaped bread typically topped with a tomato sauce, cheese and various toppings.Originating in Italy, from the Neapolitan cuisine, the dish has become popular in many parts of the world. An establishment that makes and sells pizzas is called a "pizzeria"...
chef
Chef
A chef is a person who cooks professionally for other people. Although over time the term has come to describe any person who cooks for a living, traditionally it refers to a highly skilled professional who is proficient in all aspects of food preparation.-Etymology:The word "chef" is borrowed ...
, who is credited with popularizing gourmet
Gourmet
Gourmet is a cultural ideal associated with the culinary arts of fine food and drink, or haute cuisine, which is characterised by elaborate preparations and presentations of large meals of small, often quite rich courses...
California-style pizza
California-style pizza
California-style pizza is a style of single-serving pizza that combines New York and Italian thin crust with toppings from the California cuisine cooking style. Wolfgang Puck popularized this style of pizza...
s. Ed LaDou was the first pizza chef at Wolfgang Puck
Wolfgang Puck
Wolfgang Johannes Puck is an Austrian-American celebrity chef, restaurateur, businessman and occasional actor. Wolfgang Puck restaurants, catering services, cookbooks and licensed products are run by Wolfgang Puck Companies, with three divisions...
's Spago restaurant in L.A. He also developed the first menu for the California Pizza Kitchen
California Pizza Kitchen
California Pizza Kitchen , known within the food industry as CPK, is a casual dining restaurant chain that specializes in California-style pizza...
.
The invention of the California-style pizza
California-style pizza
California-style pizza is a style of single-serving pizza that combines New York and Italian thin crust with toppings from the California cuisine cooking style. Wolfgang Puck popularized this style of pizza...
begins with a Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, pizza restaurant, Chez Panisse
Chez Panisse
Chez Panisse is a Berkeley, California restaurant known for using local, organic foods and credited as the inspiration for the style of cooking known as California cuisine. Well-known restauranteur, author, and food activist Alice Waters co-founded Chez Panisse in 1971 with film producer Paul...
, and its owner, Alice Waters
Alice Waters
Alice Louise Waters is an American chef, restaurateur, activist, and author. She is the owner of Chez Panisse, a Berkeley, California restaurant famous for its organic, locally-grown ingredients and for pioneering California cuisine.Waters opened the restaurant in 1971. It has consistently ranked...
. Waters was the first to create pizzas with exotic and unusual toppings which were cooked in a wood-burning pizza oven
Wood-fired oven
Wood-fired ovens, also known as wood ovens , are ovens that use wood fuel for cooking. There are two types of wood-fired ovens: "black ovens" and "white ovens"...
. However, LaDou was a major figure in the development and popularity of these types of pizzas.
LaDou was known for introducing very unusual ingredients into his pizza recipes at a time when such toppings were highly unorthodox. Examples include duck
Duck
Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the Anatidae family of birds, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the Anatidae family; they do not represent a monophyletic group but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered...
breast and hoisin sauce
Hoisin sauce
Hoisin sauce, or haixian sauce, is a Chinese dipping sauce. The word hoisin is a romanization of the Chinese word for seafood "" as pronounced in Cantonese.-Ingredients:...
pizza and barbecue
Barbecue
Barbecue or barbeque , used chiefly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia is a method and apparatus for cooking meat, poultry and occasionally fish with the heat and hot smoke of a fire, smoking wood, or hot coals of...
chicken pizza.
Early life
Ed LaDou was born on McChord Air Force Base in Washington stateWashington State
Washington State may refer to:* Washington , often referred to as "Washington state" to differentiate it from Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States* Washington State University, a land-grant college in that state- See also :...
on October 9, 1955. His father, Edward M. LaDou, was a United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
pilot
Aviator
An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...
and his mother is named Patricia Gallinetti. LaDou was partially raised in Los Altos, California
Los Altos, California
Los Altos is a city at the southern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The city is in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 28,976 according to the 2010 census....
, and first worked at a restaurant when he was a high school student.
Pizza
LaDou was working as a chef at several restaurants in San Francisco by the mid-1970s. He gained a reputation as an experimental pizza maker, which often made him popular with his customers, but sometimes clashed with the ideas of the owners of the restaurants in which he worked. LeDou was working at a restaurant called Prego, when he was discovered by chef Wolfgang Puck, who was eating at the restaurant. Puck ordered one of LaDou's pizzas, which was topped with ricotta cheeseRicotta cheese
Ricotta is an Italian dairy product made from sheep milk whey left over from the production of cheese. Although typically referred to as ricotta cheese, ricotta is not properly a cheese because it is not produced by coagulation of casein...
, red pepper
Capsicum
Capsicum is a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. Its species are native to the Americas where they have been cultivated for thousands of years, but they are now also cultivated worldwide, used as spices, vegetables, and medicines - and have become are a key element in...
s, pâté
Pâté
Pâté is a mixture of ground meat and fat minced into a spreadable paste. Common additions include vegetables, herbs, spices, and either wine or cognac, armagnac or brandy...
and mustard
Mustard (condiment)
Mustard is a condiment made from the seeds of a mustard plant...
and immediately offered him a job at his Spago restaurant in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, which at the time was not open yet.
Spago opened in January 1982 with LaDou as its first pizza chef. Puck allowed La Dou to choose his own toppings and recipes. The original menu
Menu
In a restaurant, a menu is a presentation of food and beverage offerings. A menu may be a la carte – which guests use to choose from a list of options – or table d'hôte, in which case a pre-established sequence of courses is served....
included pizzas topped with duck sausage
Sausage
A sausage is a food usually made from ground meat , mixed with salt, herbs, and other spices, although vegetarian sausages are available. The word sausage is derived from Old French saussiche, from the Latin word salsus, meaning salted.Typically, a sausage is formed in a casing traditionally made...
or smoked salmon
Smoked salmon
Smoked salmon is a preparation of salmon, typically a fillet that has been cured and then hot or cold smoked. Due to its moderately high price, smoked salmon is considered a delicacy.-Presentation:...
. LaDou later remarked in an interview about his move to Spago's, "It was like being an artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
who'd worked with 10 colors all of his life and then got to use 300." LaDou's pizzas were highly popular, making reservations at Spago's very hard to get.
LaDou was approached by Larry Flax, who co-founded the California Pizza Kitchen
California Pizza Kitchen
California Pizza Kitchen , known within the food industry as CPK, is a casual dining restaurant chain that specializes in California-style pizza...
in 1985 with fellow attorney
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, Rick Rosenfield. Flax had previously taken a pizza making course with LaDou at Los Angeles' Ma Maison, where Wolfgang Puck had been a chef immediately prior to opening Spago's. Flax and Rosenfield asked LaDou to help develop a menu for the California Pizza Kitchen. LaDou accepted and developed the restaurant chain's first menu, which included the CPK's signature barbecue chicken pizza. The California Pizza Kitchen became a success and now has restaurants across the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and worldwide.
LaDou left California Pizza Kitchen shortly after developing its menu. He eventually opened his own restaurant, called Caioti, which first opened in Laurel Canyon
Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, California
Laurel Canyon is a canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was first developed in the 1910s, and became a part of the city of Los Angeles in 1923 ....
before moving to its current location in Studio City, California.
LaDou was invited by the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
to demonstrate his pizza techniques at the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival
Smithsonian Folklife Festival
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, launched in 1967, is an international exhibition of living cultural heritage presented annually in the summer in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is held for two weeks around the Fourth of July holiday...
in Washington D.C. in 2005.
Death
Ed LaDou died of cancerCancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
, on December 27, 2007, at the age of 52. He was survived by his wife, Carrie LaDou, and their daughter, Cassidy Rose.