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The making of an Indian American specialty.

- BY HANNAH GOLDFIELD

Indian pizza, pioneered in the Bay Area, reflects an inevitable meeting of traditions.

In 2021, Avish Naran had an epiphany. After graduating from culinary school, in Napa, he’d been cycling through the kitchens of high-end Indian restaurants in San Francisco and New York—Rooh, August 1 Five, Indian Accent—with an eye toward opening his own someday. “And then I realized, like, dude, there’s no fucking way that I’m going to be able to do this shit as good as, like, any of these people,” he told me, referring to his former bosses. “All these guys are from India!” Naran was sitting at the bar of Pijja Palace, the restaurant that he opened in 2022 in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, on the ground floor of a Comfort Inn. He is thirty-three, tall and slightly gangly, with an open, goofy face that belies a deadpan sense of humor. The motel, which is owned by his father and his uncle, emigrants from London, is not far from where Naran grew up, in Echo Park. Before he took over the lease, the storefront was occupied by a podiatrist.