You Can Thank California Pizza Kitchen For Inventing This Fan-Favorite Pizza Topping

It may have fallen on hard times in recent years, but California Pizza Kitchen was once at the center of culinary innovation in the United States. It's hard to believe that for a brand most people now associate with food courts and frozen food aisles, but when it first opened in 1985, California Pizza Kitchen was a trendy sensation in its home city of Los Angeles. Sitting on South Beverly Drive in ultra-exclusive Beverly Hills, the new pizzeria was trying to coast on the success of Wolfgang Puck's Spago, the world-renowned restaurant that was the center of 80s dining in L.A., and which was known for its creative "California Style" pizzas. Owners Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax even hired Puck's pizza chef Ed LaDou to develop the menu for CPK. While many of its early experiments haven't stood the test of time, it was clear from the beginning that the restaurant had something special with the barbecue chicken pizza.

With decades of pizza innovation and expanding American palates behind us, it's easy to look at barbecue chicken pizza as nothing unusual. But in the 80s, that kind of pizza topping was unheard of. The trend towards experimental toppings had only begun a few years earlier, when famous chef Alice Waters kicked off the experimental California Pizza style at Chez Panisse, and some Bay Area spots started following her lead. One of those pizza restaurants was called Prego, whose chef was Ed LaDou, and that is where Wolfgang Puck found him.

Working at Spago, LaDou made pizza one of the main draws. His pies included exotic combos, like duck breast and hoisin sauce, or pate and ricotta. Rosenfield and Flax wanted to bring that trend to people, but at price points much lower than the swanky Spago. At California Pizza Kitchen, LaDou developed similar pizzas, but the more casual clientele wasn't as enamored of radicchio and grape leaf pizza as Spago's diners were. What they did love was the barbecue chicken pizza. California Pizza Kitchen was an overnight sensation, getting so busy that the restaurant couldn't even take reservations, and 90% of it was the barbecue chicken. Rosenfield and Flax quickly saw where the winds were blowing and pivoted the concept based on its success. Instead of more luxury toppings, the model became taking dishes people already liked and putting them on pizza.

LaDou left California Pizza Kitchen after only a month; he was only a consultant and never a partner, but the barbecue chicken pizza is still CPK's signature item to this day. Maintaining an early focus on fresh ingredients compared to other chains, and pushing out new items based on the barbecue chicken model, like a BLT pizza, California Pizza Kitchen rapidly expanded to 25 locations before being acquired by PepsiCo in the mid-90s. Its fortunes have waxed and waned since then, but no matter what happens, it will always have the barbecue chicken pizza.