Itโs just shy of noonโpizza time for many, game time for Randy Clement. Like he says, โFuckinโ, the dream is free; the hustle is sold separately.โ He darts between the front and back of house at Triple Beam Pizza, hollering the occasional โhey, man!โ through the accordion gate to queueing friends and customers.ย This is the first restaurant in Clementโs new culinary minicampus on Highland Parkโs Figueroa Street, which, for several years now, has been one of Los Angelesโ fastest gentrifying areas. Helmed by Clement and his multi-James-Beard-award-winning friends, Matt Molina and Nancy Silverton, thereโs already a Highland Park Wine, while a new restaurant from Molina and a branch of Go Get โEm Tiger are slated to open later this year.
But right now, itโs all about Triple Beam, which is already churning the comforting aromas of bread god Silvertonโs crust throughout the complex. With the demeanor of a favorite high school sports coach who high-fives everyone in the hallways, Clement clearly loves playing captain of the front of house. โIโll literally be here all day long, just talking to every single person,โ he says. Everyone in line gets a menu and an explanatory riff from Clement: โSo, Roman-style pizza. What that means is that it comes out in these big pies. Say how much you want. They weigh it by the ounce.โ
Clement and Molina have been working together on this concept since Molina left his seat at chi SPACCA and Osteria Mozza, part of Silvertonโs Italianplex institution, to open the Arts Districtโs Everson Royce Bar with Clement in 2015. Silverton got word of her chefโs new moves, and wanted in on the pizza concept just beginning to take shapeโโletโs do it Roman style,โ she suggested, wherein crispy-bottomed, chewy-topped pies are cut with scissors and purchased by the ounce.
Itโs a collaboration with almost two decades of history behind it. Molina and Clement met during their tenures at Silvertonโs seminal Campinile in the late 1990s, when they were hired just days apart and just shy of Clementโs 21st birthday. Clementโs next move after Campanile was to open Silver Lake Wine with his partner, April Langford, in 2001, to which Los Angeles owes much of its approachable wine culture. Silver Lake Wineย was an antidote to what Clement calls the stodgy โlegacy wine shopsโ of yore, and with packed weekly tastings that feel like house parties jamed with neighbors, they helped place natural, organic, and biodynamic wine into the local consciousness.
โWhen we opened,โ Clement explains, โthere were no small wine shops. That concept didnโt exist.โ Though his selections pushed the palates of adventurous Angelinos, it was what the community already craved. โWe let the neighborhood define what they want,โ says Clement. โWhen we opened Silver Lake Wine, I said, โWe should just fuckinโ call this store โYou Should.โ Everyone was like, โYou should do this; you should do this.โ The people speak, and we order what they like. Weโre not out here with a fuckinโ viticultural agenda, you know what I mean?โ
Clement recognizes that natural wine is having a cultural moment, but is wary of the flitting of trends. โI figure, nice is trend-proof,โ he says. โThatโs the idea. We know, God willing, that we live on this earth long enough to see things change and come and go. People wore suspenders in the ’80s, and fuckinโโฆwhat are those things, with the plaid shit? What was it called? What Nirvana wore?โ I offer, do you mean flannels? โYeah, flannels in the 90s.โ He pauses to wave at a customer. โI know the trends will change, but nice is trend roof, you know what I mean? We want all of this to be culturally relevant, but I think just being flat out nice, and helpful and,โ with breathless emphasis, โthankful!โ He sighs. โEverything else should work itself out.โ
Surveying his empireโa network of outposts covering Silver Lake, Pasadena, the Arts District, and now Highland Parkโitโs clear that a lot of his success here did, indeed, work itself out. But itโs still the nascent days of his most complex project, so Clement is constantly QCing the attitude and delivery of all of his staff to ensure the live up to this rep. โThe hardest thing to disrupt people out of is fine,โ he remarks. โTo get people to change from fine, thatโs where you gotta layer on all the niceness.โ
A focus on friendly customer service didnโt just do Clement’s business good, but in part helped spin the web of a new wine culture radiating out of Los Angeles, the kind that rewards curiosity and a craving for a good time over expertise and pretension. To that end, there are some tweaks he wants to make, to refine the experiential concept of Triple Beam, because he doesnโt โwant people to have to be able to speak English to understand this.โ
โNow, my role is to make sure thatโฆโโClement pauses to thank someone coming inโโthe world at large understands how this works, and that we do it in a digestible way that isnโt confusing, and that we develop a narrative thatโs clean enough.โ His attention snaps back to a couple newcomers, handing them menus and shepherding proper line formation.
โThe way I look at this,โ Clement drifts into rumination and leans in close, โis that itโs like eating mushrooms for the first time. You donโt wanna do like a bunch of mushrooms or acid by yourself. Youโre always gonna do it with someone thatโs done it before. You eat it together. Then they walk up to you two minutes later, like, โHow do you feel?โ and youโre like โAh, everythingโs getting a little traily. Iโm kinda feeling super happy and laughing.โ And Iโm like, โCool, thatโs exactly what itโs supposed to be.โ You know what I mean?โ I sort of did. โSo Iโm here to make sure that first trip goes good.โ
If Clement is the spirit guide of the hectic, buoyant bustle of their buzzing new pizza joint, then his partner April Langford is the sage in the back. She โspeaks the least and thinks the most, unswayed by massive amounts of optimism or emotion,โ says Clement, while manning the juice in the quiet refuge of Highland Park Wine. โAprilโs like the boss of all things. Sheโs the head of Voltron,โ Clement explains in reverence. โYou go through Aprilโsheโs like the oracle in the Matrix. Thereโs a sign in the bar in the back storage area that says, โBe like April.โ The people that work here put it up, not us! I look at it, and, Iโm like, โYeah, me too! I wanna be like April.’โ
As much as Clement clearly loves to be a host to a never-ending block party, heโs also very much the boss. Heโs a people person who, at times, thinks like a developer. He talks about eyeing Figueroa since 2005, of thinking of it as โthe true corridor for the east side of Los Angeles for a variety of reasons,โ including abundant freeway exists, Metro stops, and a rare old-LA walkability. He talks about speaking to students at the USC School of Business and gleaning that what the younger consumers want are experiences, rather than things, and how that elevates Triple Beam into the aforementioned disruption of fine that Clement craves to create in peopleโs lives.
As Iโm eating my pizza, a middle aged woman walks in and asks me, โWhat is this?โ Quรฉ bonitio!โ She’s lived in Highland Park for 32 years, and remarked on how different it looks to her. What some think of as โdisrupting fineโ as a boon, others may see it differently. But in the mind of Clement, โWe built an emotional platform for people to stand on, and it happens to be pizza.” โThe wines happen to be great tasting alcohol delivery devices. The bar downtown is a neverending party. But itโs all built on this same emotional platform.โ
He pauses for a bit, and begins to meander again, drawing a comparison to listening to recorded Stephen Hawking talks with his kids, because, he says, โIโm not capable of describing the idea of what โbigโ really is.โ
What he means in terms of pizza and wine is this: โIf the people are into something, the people make it big; not me, not us. We just build a platform.โ