Pie in the Sky

“Really Ugly Bread, $1.50,” read a sign in the display case. The bread had a handsome red-orange tone, presumably from tomato juice in the dough, but it was indeed a homely, lumpy runt of a loaf, like a French roll having a disastrous hair day.

I thought nothing of it; I was there to get a goat cheese, spinach and roasted pepper sandwich. But the merry cashier with the pierced nose said, “All we’ve got right now is the ugly bread.” So I had a pretty good goat cheese, spinach and roasted pepper sandwich on really ugly bread, heated up in a pizza oven by a chef with panel tattooing all over his forearms.

Millie’s Honk ‘n’ Holler Pizza Parlor, which boasts “fine food since September,” was recommended by a Silver Lake resident as the first place to have exotic (as well as regular) pizzas--and offer delivery service--in her neighborhood. It does make good pizzas and sandwiches, but the best thing about this outgrowth of the neighboring lunch counter named Millie’s might really be that raffish, goofball Silver Lake style.

With which the Honk ‘n’ Holler quite overflows. This is the only pizza place I’ve ever seen that had a sample of Norwegian humor (all about the definition of some expression called “uff da”) on a card taped to the cash register. Are the owners Norwegian? No, the card was just on the register when they bought it secondhand.

Next to it stands an 18-inch-high Christmas tree decorated with packets of ground red pepper. There’s a jar for tips beside the cash register; if you do drop a buck in it, the cashier is likely to ring a little silver bell. And the pizzas and sandwiches sometimes have names so quaint that she may observe, “Somebody had a couple too many cups of coffee when they came up with that one.”

The cartoonish menu, which blithely misspells “prosciutto” two ways, lists a few fairly standard thin-crust pizzas: tomato and basil, garlic clams, and spinach with ricotta and pine nuts. Even the simple cheese pizza is quite good, because of its rich, tangy Cheddarish cheese. Just watch out for a slice that’s been under the hot lamp too long, though--the cheese can dry out. As usual, you can doctor plain cheese pizza (whole or by the slice) with various toppings, from sausage to sun-dried tomatoes.

The “special pies” show a taste for the odd. Nickey’s undercover bull’s-eye pizza has a circle of pesto in the center surrounded by tomato sauce, mushrooms and shrimp. It’s garlicky and very rich. Mrs. Tomaselli’s pizza is a tangy model topped with feta, capers, rosemary and sliced potatoes, which get a bit browned. The chef apparently amuses himself most nights by inventing nameless pizzas that get sold by the slice (e.g., prosciutto with asparagus).

The only calzone I’ve had was filled with spinach and ricotta, but there are sausage models as well. Often there’s a high-rise pie (torta) with a thick, practically medieval crust, usually with a vegetarian filling of mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and cheese. One too-many-cups-of-coffee evening, it was labeled “tender, gentle veggie torta.” And of course there are sandwiches (not always on ugly bread) with fillings mostly based on chicken or turkey.

The nightly dessert, which the menu characterizes as “a not so bad end to a pretty darn good meal,” is usually very good. Once it was an old-fashioned brownie, the kind that’s more like a thick, spongy cookie or a dryish, low-rise chocolate cake than fudge. The so-called blueberry cobbler isn’t actually a cobbler in the usual sense (restaurant cobblers are nearly always pies or crumbles). It’s a layer of cake, a layer of blueberries and a thick streusel layer; in effect, a New England blueberry buckle, that most delightful of coffeecakes. The best dessert I’ve had was a dense apple and blackberry “tart” on pizza dough.

Millie’s Honk ‘n’ Holler also offers salad, soft drinks and organic fruit juices. There are two or three tables out on the sidewalk, but nearly all the business seems to be takeout or delivery. For the record, delivery is available free in the Silver Lake area and for $2.75 outside the area “within reason”--if that isn’t some sort of Silver Lake joke.

BE THERE

Millie’s Honk ‘n’ Holler Pizza Parlor, 3536 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. (323) 661-3663. No alcohol. Street parking. No credit cards. Takeout. Open 10 a.m.-10 p.m. daily. Calzones $4.50; sandwiches $6.50; pizzas $12-$20, desserts $3.

What to Get: goat cheese, spinach and roasted pepper sandwich, vegetable torta, Nickey’s undercover bull’s-eye pizza, Mrs. Tomaselli’s pizza, blueberry cobbler, apple berry tart.