Joe's Pizza Sherman Oaks

Excellent slice of NY plus they have Sicilian and Grandma pies too!

Love this pizza. Go to New York if you want a better slice and stop complaining!

We originally discovered Joe’s when it was in the Sherman Oaks Galleria…how strange and wonderful it was to find genuinely good NY style pizza in a mall! We were sad when it closed but super-excited to hear they finally opened their slice-shop in another part of Sherman Oaks. Sunday night is pizza night in this neck of the woods and decent NY pies are hard to come by in the Valley (I mean besides Mulberry Street which is about 2 blocks away.) This location is a more traditional (than the mall location was) no-nonsense shop with a few tables. We met another family there and were happy to sit the kids at one table while we adults enjoyed slices like civilized human beings.

In a nutshell, the slices are still better than 95% of the NY style slices you can get anywhere in L.A. though this time around, and we’re hoping it was just a bad batch, the sauce on all of our different slices (and my wife’s gluten free) was way too salty. Salty to the point where it really deflated our excitement for the re-opening of Joe’s.

I had a cheese slice and a grandma’s slice. The cheese is a traditional slice, the grandma has a bit more of the sauce and is topped with fresh mozzarella (as opposed to shredded). Both tasted good…especially the cheese which came from a pie that came right out of oven without having to be reheated. The crust was perfect as was the cheese. Again the sauce was was way too salty. (Way saltier than I remember it being previously and obviously, at least according to all of our adult palettes, was not the way it should be.

Kudos for offering a gluten free option (a cauliflower based crust) which my wife had. She thought it was fine but this particular style crust doesn’t excite her that much…at the very least it was nice that it was an option so the whole family could enjoy pizza night.

Our kid didn’t live his mushroom slice. It was kind of like a cheese slice heated up and then mushrooms put on top and not cooked. That may appeal to some but he’s used to mushroom pizza where the mushrooms are cooked so the almost raw mushrooms on top didn’t do it for him.

We also had ordered salads which they forgot to make so we ended up taking them to go. It’s a new shop and they’re probably not used to so many people dining in…so they need probably just need to get their system down.

So, in another nutshell, it was still better than 95% of NY pizzas in LA. But they definitely need to up their game in terms of the actual product as we would really have no problem defaulting to at least as good Mulberry Street a couple blocks away.

Full wall photo of New York City looking at George Washington Bridge.
Pizza is good. The slices should be bigger for the price. All Italian/pizza condiments are available and they do have gluten free single size pies.
Best thing is they're open late till 11pm weekdays & 12am Thurs-Sat.
Ample parking at night. May be hard to see from the street. It's in the shopping center with many restaurants and a Starbucks, which is open till 12:30 a.m. daily,