EATS

PM is a partnership between Nancy Silverton, Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich, but the restaurant is mostly in the capable hands of Silverton, who has long been a hero of mine. When I was a pastry chef, hers were some of the cookbooks from which I learned and cribbed the most. (Browning butter with a split vanilla bean to pour over just-cut fruit for a crisp? Perfection.)

Silverton, one of the country's most accomplished bakers, sold most of her share in La Brea Bakery, the shop attached to star LA restaurant Campanile, a few years ago for a lot of dough. But she's an ambitious, perfectionist sort who wanted a new project. While searching for a location to house her in-the-works project with Batali and Bastianich, she came across a space that had an annex with a pizza oven. The light bulb sparked. And what she thought would be a modest side project turned into one of the hottest restaurants in LA. If you go, you have to make reservations well ahead of time.

A puffy, nubbly rim swells up around the circumference of her pizzas, which apparently take about four minutes each to cook in a 700 degree oven. They possess that essential pizza crust characteristic: The flavors won't stay still. One mouthful may be salty, sweet, smoky and pleasantly, fleetingly acrid. The pie's center is thin and crisp. Silverton purportedly uses a little rye flour and malt in her dough.

Get ready for the toppings. My favorite was sweet, concentrated tomato sauce flecked with yellow and green-striped squash blossoms that baked to crispness. In each segment of the pizza, the cooks had placed post-baking blobs of burrata.

Lordy. I probably scared my friend Kim O'Donnel, with whom I was sharing this adventure. She's seen me stuff myself plenty of times, but this pizza had me levitating. The milky, gentle squish of the burrata with the charred, hard-to-define crust and the earthy-sweet blossoms was so extravagant and right.

Nearly as thrilling: Another pizza topped with a dark green scattering of wild nettles (a spring vegetable du jour in California), cacio di roma (a semi-firm sheep's milk cheese) and salame. Sharp and feral, this combination, but not overwhelming.

Another topped with bacon, salami, fennel sausage, guanciale (cured pork jowl), tomato and mozzarella - often appropriately dubbed the "meat lover's" by the staff - was fun overkill.

Before the pizza, we had a few antipasti: a jumble of faro, cucumber, radishes, tomatoes and good, tangy feta that was almost too salty, and almost too vinegary, but never quite crossed either line. Cauliflower gratinate was "essentially mac-and-cheese made with cauliflower instead," quipped Kim. Also, simple fried squash blossoms with ricotta. Yes, a double dose of squash blossoms. They are one of my favorite things to eat, and I didn't find them served here much locally last spring and summer.

We ordered desserts, but I was really too high on (and full of) pizza to pay attention - a shame, given Silverton's renown as a pastry chef. And, actually, blood orange sorbet needed more true blood orange taste.

Ah, but after her pizza, I couldn't resist going to Osteria Mozza, the sister restaurant right next door, two nights later. That story tomorrow.