Dough Girl Pizza
DETAILS:
Location: 16851 Victory Blvd, Lake Balboa, CA 91406
Hours of Operation:
Sunday thru Thursday: 11AM-ish to 10PM
Friday & Saturday: 12PM-ish to 3AM-ish (hours are a little fluid here, lol)
Parking: Free parking lot on site. Street parking also available. Please observe posted street signs.
Cost:
Selfies size (12”) range from $7 to $14. These pizzas are pretty large and will easily fill 1 person.
Big Dough size (20”) range from $14 to $26.
Time Commitment: 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Miscellaneous: Vegan options also available. Dough Girl also offers a small selection of salads, dessert pizzas, and appetizers. Lemonade (cherry and regular flavor) is the only beverage offered.
One of my core beliefs is that pizza makes everything just a little bit better. I can hardly think of any scenario that doesn’t improve with the addition of pizza. Watching sports? Goes without saying. At work? Makes the day half-way tolerable. A bad breakup? You’ll probably want at least two. In these moments, you’d be hard pressed to find a better option than Dough Girl Pizza in Lake Balboa. But proving that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, there’s more going on at Dough Girl then just pizza and it will fill your heart as much as it fills your stomach. Mar Diego, who established Dough Girl in 2014, is a shining example of what you can accomplish when given a second chance. Raised in a Pacoima housing project, Mar grew up doing whatever it took to survive. Some would call it hustling, but for Mar, it was a necessity of life. Eventually though, this lifestyle would land her in state prison for five years. Ironically, she discovered a passion for cooking while serving in the kitchen there. Determined to improve her life and avoid incarceration ever again, Mar decided to put that passion to use and enrolled as a culinary student at Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena. This eventually lead to a catering position with Wolfgang Puck which lead to high profile restaurant gigs throughout Los Angeles. All of this was possible because a handful of people along the way were willing to give an ex-convict a second chance and Mar saw to it that none of them would be let down. She continues to pay that favor forward by staffing Dough Girl with troubled teens, many of whom are fighting drug addiction and homelessness, in an ongoing effort to help local youths get off the street and find their own self-worth in the process. The world needs more people like Mar Diego.
But none of this would matter if the food wasn’t good enough to keep the doors opens, and I’m happy to report that the pizza at Dough Girl is amazing. Far from your average cheese and sausage joint, the menu is filled with sophisticated choices like a lobster bisque pizza (“The Mobster”), seasonal selections including a strawberry & balsamic pie, and an “Animal Style” pizza inspired by In-N-Out (complete with french fries) that is an absolute must-try experience. You wouldn’t expect any of these gourmet pizzas to come from a nondescript storefront nestled in the middle of an equally nondescript strip mall, but just like Mar and her employees, never judge a book by its cover. Once you go, I promise that you too will give Dough Girl Pizza a second chance… and a third… and many more after that, confirming yet again that pizza truly does make everything better.
