This onetime pizza van pop-up now has a brick-and-mortar in Long Beach’s Belmont Heights, where heavenly circles of naturally leavened sourdough float out of the oven with astonishing speed. Relative to other red-hot pizzas around town, the bubbly, well-charred slices here have more definitive heft, with a menu that mixes conventional pies like margherita and pepperoni with more unique options, including the Hawaii Pie Oh, made with koji-infused tomatoes, charred pineapple, fermented jalapeños, among other market-driven toppings. Hovering around the $20 mark—dairy-free and cheese varieties aside—these pies don’t exactly come cheap, but discerning pizza fans will find plenty in the way of quality and flavor to justify the cost and effort involved.

The crust at this cheffy pizza spot is a gorgeous cross between sourdough and New York style, with a crackly crunch along the bottom and those leopard-spotted ends we know and love. The greatest pie in the house is the LBC, a classic cheese pizza topped with fennel sausage, pepperoni cups, and cute little dollops of ricotta for a bit of creaminess. They also have a thin, foldable bar pizza on the menu called The Heights which is so crispy it’s suggested you eat it hot from the oven rather than taking it to-go.

What most distinguishes Speak Cheezy (3950 E Fourth St) is its dough: delicious and tangy sourdough, righteously charred and bursting with buttery flavor. To produce such pies requires 120 hours of fermentation, and you can taste each minute of care spent creating these masterpieces. At Pizza Parlor (2936 Clark Ave), pies are made with naturally leavened sourdough crust, and pizzas on the menu include the LA Taco, topped with birria, and the BTSC, with bechamel sauce, purple sweet potato, sausage, and jalapeño chilis.

Recently named one of WaPo’s Best Pizza’s in America, Speak Cheezy became one of the newest pizza hangouts in the LBC after they traded their van for a brick-and-mortar about a year and a half ago. One of the few sourdough pizza makers in L.A. County, they also have a unique ingredient-forward style featuring lots of interesting combinations like the mushroom and truffle (“Truffle Shuffle”), the rosemary and pistachio (Pizzeria Bianco’s Rosa pizza), or the Tye Dye, topped with a vodka pesto swirl and burrata cheese.

Once you’ve tried all the other pizza places in California, come to Speak Cheezy, home to the world’s perfect crust. It’s a combination of New York-style and sourdough, and it’s 100% delicious. The pizza is so good that The Washington Post once called it the “best pizza in America.” There are many tasty options to consider here, including pepperoni, margherita, vodka sausage, black garlic, and pumpkin honey, among many other options.

Long Beach’s latest pizza challenger to enter the southeast L.A. beach community isn’t even a month old, but it came in swinging into Belmont Heights with its very-own birria pizza. Their Instagram account posted a story this week showing the process of building up the flavor in their beef short rib-based birria, including adding their own fermented chiles to mix up their birria adobo usually made with just dried chiles.

Speak Cheezy is our favorite pizza place in Long Beach that isn’t named Little Coyote. Their crust is a gorgeous cross between sourdough and New York-style, with a brittle crispness along the bottom and those leopard-spotted ends we know and love. The greatest pie in the house is the LBC, a classic cheese pizza topped with fennel sausage, pepperoni cups, and cute little dollops of ricotta for a bit of creaminess.

Chef Jason Winters has worked in the kitchens of some of the country’s best chefs. About a decade ago, he founded Urban Pies, which was both one of the first mobile wood fired pizzerias in Southern California as well one of the first sourdough pizzas in the region. After becoming a top pizza caterer in Los Angeles, Jason decided to purchase the former Scratch Baked Goods space in Long Beach and open Speak Cheezy.

Chef Jason Winters has long been known for sourdough pies that require 120 hours of fermentation. But it was only recently that he put an oven in a van and started driving par-baked dough around the city. This van, known as Speak Cheezy, has been a breakout hit that now regularly visits the homes of Hollywood celebrities, pro athletes, adult-entertainment entrepreneurs, and food-industry insiders.

When it comes to perfecting the art of pizza, Speak Cheezy does it best. As one of the original purveyors of sourdough pizza crust in SoCal, this renowned eatery takes quality seriously. Ingredients are sourced from generational producers and farmers markets, and the dough is made with locally milled and organic flour.

This place offers amazing pizza on 5-day naturally fermented sourdough crust!. From Sicilian squares to Chicago tavern style pizzas, they offer great fresh ingredients and hand-stretched mozzarella curds shipped straight from New York. Closed on Mondays but be sure to check them out any other day of the week!

Chef Jason Winters continues his array of pizza collaborations—from Gemma to Heritage as of late—and his latest iteration of those partnerships will be with Chef Carlos Jurado of Selva. The pizza will be available Wednesday, Mar. 13, from 4PM to 7PM (or sell-out).

It’s a clever riff on Long Beach’s Retro Row of which is a part of 4th Street, a street that houses many other pizza joints such as The 4th Horseman, Canadian Pizza, and Little Coyote, as well as newcomers Speak Cheezy and Kids on Coffee inside of Eddie’s.

San & Wolves (pop-up) is going to open their brick-and-mortar very soon in the same neighborhood as Speak Cheezy. Kym Estrada is the owner and she’s working really hard to get that bakery open.

Speak Cheezy started as a mobile pizza van serving Southern California. It now whips up delightful sourdough double-baked pies in a fixed casual space.