Casa Bianca has made Highland Park wait since forever

Casa Bianca Pizza on Colorado Blvd is one of those places that gets brought up every time someone asks where the old Los Angeles went. It has been here long enough that the wait itself has become part of the reputation. People plan around it. They bring cash, because the place does not take cards, and they settle in.

The menu is straightforward Italian-American: thin-crust pizza with a house red sauce, pepperoni, sausage and pepper, baked lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, antipasto salad, garlic bread. Nothing on that list will surprise you. That is exactly the point. The food tastes like it has always tasted, which is why people keep coming back across years and decades.

With a 4.6 across more than 1,100 reviews, the ratings hold up even accounting for the waits and the cash-only policy, both of which generate their share of complaints. If those two things would genuinely bother you, go in knowing. But if you can work around them, this is a Highland Park institution that has earned its lines.