Colossus Harbor Restaurant Review – Los Angeles Times

Over the past five years, Los Angeles has become a mecca of flour, water and salt. In most neighborhoods, it's impossible to get around without stumbling upon a scoop of sourdough or a better-than-average croissant. Especially in Pasadena, I happily drown in a golden sea of ​​laminated dough.

But I put more miles on my aging Prius than I thought possible whenever the craving for sourdough or an excellent slice of pizza strikes.

Colossus Harbor opened on Valentine's Day 2025 on the ground floor of a luxury apartment complex called Vivo on Harbor in San Pedro. The restaurant's floor-to-ceiling windows offer stunning views of the main canal across the street and the rainbow shipping containers on Terminal Island. In the evening it appears to be the only source of light on this stretch of South Harbor Boulevard.

You can think of Colossus Harbor as three restaurants in one: a bustling pastry and coffee destination in the early hours, with flaky, buttery croissants that fall apart into large, delicate shards. A lunchtime destination where guests in suits roll up their sleeves to devour BLT sandwiches, and families fresh from the latest Princess Cruise to dock at the Port of Los Angeles stop for chicken Caesar salad sandwiches. In the evening, couples make googly eyes over foam-crusted pizzas the size of truck tires.

It is the third spin-off of the Colossus Bread bakery, which Kristin Colazas Rodriguez opened in San Pedro in 2019. A location in Long Beach followed in 2021. Although she grew up in Long Beach, she was very familiar with the area through her father's job as an elementary school principal in San Pedro. After selling bread and pastries at farmers markets in Long Beach, she chose a 700-square-foot space on Alma Street next to Chori-Man in San Pedro for her first brick-and-mortar bakery.

More than twice the size of the original bakery, Colossus Harbor features a full restaurant and a superette with a shelf of grab-and-go bread and shelves full of pantry items, books, merchandise and bottles of wine. The focus is still on bread, a medium that Rodriguez fell in love with in the kitchens of Osteria Mozza and Clark Street Bakery. For a time, she moved to San Francisco to delve deeper into baking, working as a bread baker at Outerlands and as a pastry chef at Crenn.

At Colossus Harbor, Rodriguez is working with chef Jeff Paletz to expand her bread program to resemble a full restaurant menu. For breakfast, Rodriguez's croissant roll is split so that an inch-thick cloud of fluffy egg lies beneath a melted slice of Muenster cheese. It's one of the best croissants in Los Angeles, with a distinct buttery flavor and tender dough that falls apart into soft eggs.

For lunch, her signature sourdough country bread provides a plush and savory backdrop to succulent pieces of Mary's organic chicken thighs, coated in lemony, yellow-tinged Caesar dressing and turmeric.

The most popular lunch sandwich is undoubtedly the mushroom dip, in which a ball of Long Beach oyster mushrooms is marinated in oil and then roasted in the pizza oven until their edges crisp and curl. Paletz piles them on a crusty baguette and buries them in a thick layer of melted Muenster cheese. To finish the sandwich, he tops it with a sparkling horseradish cream and chives. As a side dish, there is a cup of mushroom broth enriched with soy sauce, molasses, rosemary and a touch of cayenne pepper for dunking. Beef dip? Never heard of it. I only have eyes for the spore-bearing fruiting bodies of mushrooms drowning in cheese and horseradish cream.

There is usually at least one salad for lunch and dinner. The Caesar eats like something you might find at the airport, with dry, browning lettuce, large, thick shavings of parmesan and not nearly enough dressing. Instead, look for the seasonal salad. Recently there was an overflowing plate of wild, peppery arugula with a garden full of fresh herbs and colorful flowers intertwined with spring peas.

In the evenings, the restaurant transforms into a sort of Italian-American pizzeria, where leftover sourdough bread finds its way into everything from meatballs to gnocchi.

The sourdough country bread is used in place of breadcrumbs as an additional complement to meatballs floating in a thick Sunday gravy with meat and shredded braised pork ribs.

Leftover sourdough bread is mixed with Parmesan cheese, eggs, cream and aromatics to create “gnocchi” bread dumplings with a unique, delicious, crumbly texture.

There's plenty to eat while you enjoy a glass of Rodriguez's short list of mostly natural Mediterranean wines. She prefers crisp wines with strong acidity from Greece and Slovenia as well as aromatic, strong red wines from Croatia. Most bottles range from $20 to $40, and you can open your wine in the dining room for an additional $10 corkage fee.

Any wine on the shelf pairs with Rodriguez's pizza dough, which has as many layers and as much character as a one-woman Broadway show. Made from bread flour, hard red spring wheat and spelt, its greatness lies in the bite of the crust and the flop. On a scale of zero to 10, its flop ability is a whopping 12, with a tip that droops as soon as you remove the disc from the metal pan. I can hear you all screaming. But not only does this texture work in combination with the sharp sourdough flavor of the crust, the effect is breathtaking.

The crust is covered in a mixture of barely noticeable bubbles and large mahogany-colored balloons of dough that collapse at the slightest provocation. It's breadier than a New York or Neapolitan slice, but pleasantly chewy and airy, while also feeling light and really airy. The bubbles provide the necessary crunch, while the blistered bits emphasize the toasted, caramelized flavor of the dough. It's the kind of crust you wouldn't leave behind.

When you need a glistening Tuesday night pepperoni pizza topped with enough mozzarella cheese to give it some real cheesy flavor, Colossus Harbor has you covered. But the seasonal cake, which changes every month or so, is the surprise I'm most looking forward to.

On one visit, the pizza was slathered in a creamy, garlicky white sauce with a hint of roasted broccoli. The addition of bagna càuda and lemon zest transformed the plain white cake into an umami holiday. At another dinner, a green garlic and onion pizza tasted like spring in full bloom.

Port residents should boast that one of the county's uniquely outstanding pizzerias is in their backyard. And for the rest of us, these are pizzas, pastries and sandwiches worthy of a trip to the southernmost tip of Los Angeles.