Irvine already has many pizza joints, most of them of the DIY variety popularized around these parts by Pieology. Now here's another from the same mold: Mad Pie, which just opened next to the Google building in Irvine.
At Mad Pie, you do as you would at any pizzeria of its kind: you build your own pizza, starting with a sauce (either red, white cream, or a spicy “Mad Sauce”).
Next, it'll be the cheese, which includes the usual suspects but also “Mad cheese wiz”. Then come the proteins, veggies that they call “plant”, and to “top it off”, a finishing salvo of herbs and oils. You can even add an egg for an extra $1.95.
Chef Shirley Chung, whose restaurant Twenty Eight is next door, also described her new neighbor's offerings in a cute emoji-filled post.
Mad Pie, 19530 Jamboree Rd. Unit B Irvine, CA 92612; http://www.madpieoc.com
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.