It’s 11 a.m. on a cloudy Saturday morning, and Ned and Andrea Martorana have already been in the kitchen for hours. With less than five hours until doors open, there is still much to be done, but the routine has become second-nature to the brother and sister duo.
Four industrial-sized pots nest on the stove, simmering the sauces of the evening. Mounds of fresh dough are chilling in the fridge, ready to be tossed. The phone rings occasionally for a large party reservation or a catering order, and right after the restaurant opens at 4 p.m., the phone will ring more non-stop; patrons placing to-go orders might have to redial to break through the busy landline.
Casa Bianca Pizza Pie has been a Northeast Los Angeles institution for nearly 70 years, the signature pizza and pasta beloved by both longtime residents and curious foodies of the greater L.A. area.
The culinary specialty of the Eagle Rock locale was once called the best slice of pizza in the city by the late L.A. Times food critic Jonathan Gold, who loved to get a pie topped with house-made sausage, roasted garlic cloves and fried eggplant.
The signature pink and blue neon sign and dining room interior were even featured in a scene in Clint Eastwood’s 2014 film adaptation of the hit musical “Jersey Boys.”
Many restaurants have come and gone on Eagle Rock’s stretch of Colorado Boulevard, yet Casa Bianca has stood strong, and never wavered, not even by the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ned Martorana has been running the well-oiled-and-vinegared machine for the better majority of his life, and he knows what it takes to keep the lights on.
“A restaurant isn’t just the help and the service. It’s the ingredients you buy, it’s the food that you have, and it’s the consistency, which is really important,” Ned said of the system his father perfected in the establishment’s inception. “Once you have the recipes down, then you’re off and running.”
The pride of his parents Sam and Jenny Martorana, Casa Bianca is a labor of love that draws inspiration from their Chicago roots and Sicilian traditions. The idea for the restaurant came when Sam and his brother, Joseph, took the pizza making skills they learned from Chicago locale Tony’s out west to California. Casa Bianca opened in 1955.
Every aspect of the restaurant is in analog mode, with no apparent need for an upgrade. A vintage register sits on the main counter, carrying the nightly till (Casa Bianca has been proudly cash-only since its doors first opened, with the recent exception of online orders.) The server schedule is written in pencil and tacked on in front of a large calendar sponsored by Frisco Baking Company, the restaurant’s longtime bread supplier.
The work schedule at Casa Bianca has, like all else, remained the same. Aside from select days in the holiday season and a three-week vacation in the late summer, the restaurant is open Tuesday through Saturday, a schedule that, like everything else in the establishment, was implemented by the family patriarch.
“He was just that old school type. He didn’t trust anybody to run his business unless he was here,” Andrea said of her father.
Ned and Andrea have always known a life with the restaurant at the center of it. Their childhood memories are scattered with folding pizza boxes and rolling homemade meatballs.
As they grew older, there was no handbook to the place, and they learned more each day.
“We just picked it up by osmosis, just by looking,” Ned said of his father’s unique training methods. “You see how it’s done. You make mistakes, you get yelled at, and you learn real fast.”
Casa Bianca has employed dozens of Eagle Rock residents, some even across generations.
Cid Owens began working at Casa Bianca in her early adulthood, and worked on and off for 10 years. Her daughter Leah also worked there in high school. Owen’s relationship with the Martorana family became so close that she scheduled her wedding on a Sunday, just so the family could attend.
“They knew all about our lives. They knew our parents,” she said, remembering the closeness she experienced. “They would know everything about you.”
The first roles for the high-school age kids are either “salad girl” or “busboy,” respectively. In the early days, kids could look forward to their paycheck in cash, taxes already accounted for.
With both Ned and Andrea now deservedly past retirement age, the question that crosses the minds of many devoted patrons is: Who will be the next generation to take on the brunt of the restaurant’s day-to-day and upkeep?
For now, it seems as though the heiress to the Eagle Rock empire is Andrea’s daughter Lindsay. Now a wife and mother herself, Lindsay has learned the ins and outs of the place like her mother did before her.
“I hate to see her work so hard, but if that’s what she wants,” Andrea said with a smile. “I think we all become our mothers.”
While neither Andrea nor Ned know what the future holds for the restaurant, from Tuesday through Saturday, they know for sure where the day will be spent.
When asked about the possibility of Casa Bianca closing its doors one day, Ned has only one certainty: “It may or may not, but I know nothing lasts forever.”