As a kid growing up in suburban Wisconsin in the ’90s, a “surprise, we brought home pizza!" from the adults in the house meant a couple of stuffed crusts from Pizza Hut. Luigi Roditis, who now makes his own pizza at nine-month-old il Romanista in Los Angeles, had it a little better during his childhood.

The LA native spent summers visiting relatives in Rome, where his maternal grandparents would disappear in the mornings and come back with a pizza called al taglio. It was a beautiful contradiction: a crisp bottom crust topped by light, airy dough laced with delicate holes, like the inside a good loaf of bread. “We’d have it with lunch, or as a snack after lunch,” Roditis says.