West Grove Pizza Co is the latest concept from Joe Maggiore, and a 20-year track record is why the pizza is this good. He built California Doughboy, a pizza shop at the foot of Portwood Pier Plaza in South County San Diego, and sold it in 2004. He opened Luxus Bistro 101 in 2005, the North County San Diego spot that became the Encinitas Alehouse still in business today. He ran Joey's Smokin' BBQ in Manhattan Beach until 2010. Then came Brew Kitchen Ale House in Los Alamitos in 2015, a from-scratch gastropub known for house-ground burgers, smoked ribs, house-made sausage, and a mac and cheese people still ask for by name.

That run across pizza, a bistro concept, barbecue, and a gastropub is the pedigree behind West Grove Pizza Co. It shows in the choice to spin gelato in-house, to cook pasta to order, and to enter the wings into competition and come back with a top-10 finish from the OC Register. He could have opened a volume slice counter and bought the dough frozen. He built a from-scratch pizzeria instead, on top of a pizza concept he first ran 20 years ago.

That is why West Grove Pizza Co reads as the work of an operator who has done this before, not a franchise following a manual.