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Melrose Pizza Obsession Rises to Unsustainable Levels With New Opening

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The Sit Down takes a well-known restaurant space on LA’s carb-iest stretch

The Sit Down restaurant’s pizza oven
The Sit Down
The Sit Down
Farley Elliott is the Senior Editor at Eater LA and the author of Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks. He covers restaurants in every form, from breaking news to the culture, people, and history that surrounds LA's dining landscape.

The amount of pizza on Melrose right now is just ridiculous. And, with the addition of newcomer The Sit Down to the corner of Melrose and Stanley, it looks like Italian food isn’t going anywhere for a while.

The Melrose location of the Sit Down follows in the footsteps of the Los Feliz original on Hollywood near Sunset. The first iteration is a cozy, unassuming neighborhood cafe doing Italian basics like salads, meatballs, and loads of pasta and pizza, just a block or so from places like Kismet and Go Get Em Tiger. With luck, ownership plans to keep the same feeling in place while doing dinner and brunch.

As for the space, the Sit Down took over the former Maison Richard on Stanley, which had stood for nearly 40 years as a staple French restaurant under celebrated chef Michel Richard. Maison Richard closed in 2017 and the address had sat empty on and off ever since, with the Sit Down opening last month.

With the opening of the Sit Down, Melrose’s pizza scene has reached almost comical levels. If including Cecconi’s to the west and ending at Mozza to the east, the options for pizza along Melrose already include Ronan, Spartina, Blackbird, LN2, the brand new Provami, plus local chains like Tomato Pie and Lucifers.

The Sit Down. 707 N. Stanley Ave., Los Angeles, CA.