Where to find real pizza in Costa Mesa, from serious ovens to late-night slices, mapped by area.
The local list
The best pizza in Costa Mesa splits by the night you're having. The Eastside spots around 17th Street take the craft seriously, real ovens and real dough programs. The artisanal counters around The LAB, The CAMP, and the SoBeCa district pair serious pies with the district's converted-industrial atmosphere. The old-school neighborhood parlors in Mesa Verde and along Harbor Boulevard handle the team-dinner and Friday-night jobs the way they have for decades. The by-the-slice options on Newport Boulevard feed the late crowd, and the family-easy spots near South Coast Plaza come with effortless parking. Pick by night, not by name.
I grew up a few miles up the road in Huntington Beach, and pizza is one more category where HB locals quietly point the car toward Costa Mesa. This town has the best food scene per square mile in Orange County and hides nearly all of it in strip centers and converted industrial blocks, and the pizza follows the pattern exactly. Some of the most serious dough in the county is behind storefronts you'd drive past without a second look.
As with the rest of these lists, I'm mapping areas, not naming restaurants. Pizza places turn over, and the geography is the durable knowledge anyway. Costa Mesa's pizza splits cleanly by the kind of night you're having, the craft night, the family night, the late night, and each has its own part of town. I work with buyers and sellers across Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach, and the Ratowsky Group at Compass keeps a running set of local guides linked at the bottom if you want the bigger picture.
Updated 2026-07-05
The 17th Street side is where Costa Mesa's craft pizza lives, spots where the dough gets days of fermentation, the oven is the centerpiece, and the menu is short on purpose. This is destination pizza in a town that refuses to look like a destination. Come here when the pizza itself is the plan for the evening.
The artisanal counters around The LAB, The CAMP, and SoBeCa
SoBeCa district, along Bristol Street
The SoBeCa district, anchored by The LAB and The CAMP, pairs serious pies with the best atmosphere in the city, outdoor seating, string lights, converted-industrial bones. The pizza here holds its own on craft, and the setting does the rest. It's the take-someone-from-out-of-town pizza, the one that shows off what Costa Mesa actually is.
Mesa Verde and the Harbor Boulevard corridor keep the old-school parlors alive, the red-checked-energy places doing team dinners, birthday parties, and Friday nights the same way they have for decades. Nobody's discussing fermentation schedules here, and nobody needs to. This is pizza as a family institution, and Costa Mesa still does it properly.
Newport Boulevard handles Costa Mesa's late hours in every category, and pizza is no exception. The by-the-slice options along the corridor feed the after-show, after-shift, after-everything crowd, hot, fast, and folded in half on the walk back to the car. Not the best pie on this list, and not trying to be. At midnight, it's the best pie available, which is its own kind of best.
The family-easy options near South Coast Plaza
South Coast Metro, around South Coast Plaza and Bristol Street
The blocks around South Coast Plaza collect the polished, family-easy pizza options, the ones that pair with a shopping trip, a movie, or a night at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Predictable in the reassuring sense, with high chairs, big tables, and the least stressful logistics in the city. Sometimes the best pizza is the one nobody in the car argues about.
Less a place than the method. In a town where nothing looks like anything, judge pizza by the tells: a visible oven treated like the main character, a short menu, dough talk on the wall or none at all, and a weeknight crowd that clearly lives nearby. A great pie in a plain strip center is the most Costa Mesa food experience there is.
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Frequently asked
Who stands behind this page
This guide reflects the direct experience of Craig Ratowsky and Justin Ratowsky, the father-son team behind Ratowsky Group at Compass. Craig has sold Huntington Beach real estate since 1977, 49 years and counting, and Justin is a third-generation California Realtor® who grew up here. Together they bring 58 years of combined experience and 900+ homes sold, and they read every page before it publishes.
New to the area?
Justin and Craig Ratowsky at Ratowsky Group at Compass work across this corner of Orange County every week. We're happy to match a Costa Mesa neighborhood to how you actually want to live.
