To add to Downtown LA’s booming culinary scene,  Southern Italian inspired dishes are being served up at unpretentious sixth+mill pizzeria and bar – including Neapolitan-style pizzas, pastas, and seasonal plates. Next door, you can find their sister restaurant, The Factory Kitchen serving up southern Italian dishes at a bit of a higher price point.

Tomato-based concepts and dishes inspired by the Southern region of Italy are at the heart of sixth+mill’s menu and range from classic, red and white hand-crafted pizzas, homemade and hard durum wheat pastas and a selection of easily sharable plates such as fritters and salads.

Dishes are specially curated to reflect early memories in the kitchen from Chef Angelo Auriana’s childhood in Italy. Chef Angelo imported a Mario Acunto Neopolitan-style wood-fired oven encased with refractory bricks, allowing a thermal source of heat to provide consistency throughout the baking process for pizzas and pasta al forno. Imported ingredients including cheeses, cured meats, and olive oil from the mountainous terrain of Molise, coupled with local produce, enhance the authenticity and freshness of each dish.

In an old spacious warehouse with cheery yellow chairs and massive artwork that looks like a splattered abstract tomato, we watched as pizzas like the classic Margherita made with fior di latte, Apulian extra virgin olive oil and crushed dried oregano were slung into the wood-burning pizza oven. The Vince is a fan favorite here – a white pizza composed of mozzarella, burrata, mortadella and pistachio, and soon will be offered at their second location in Las Vegas this fall at The Venetian Resort. Guests in Las Vegas will have the opportunity to create their own pizza too with toppings straight from Italy, including Calabrian chilies, Baresane olives, and spicy Sicilian anchovies.

We like the puffy airy crust dough, although we would like to have seen a crisper bottom crust to hold all the ingredients when picked up, reminiscent of our local childhood Italian pizza joints in Connecticut. We still wolfed down the tasty Coppia pizza with ricotta and fennel sausage, but consumption would be much easier with a fork and knife. The Apulia pizza was next on our list after seeing the ingredients because they not only included olives, onions, burrata, and mozzarella, but anchovies! However, the more anchovies on our pie, the better.

Wines range from $8- $12. Complement your meal with a red. Try the Montepulciano from D’Abruzzo, Italy or the Nero D’Avola from Sicily. Highlights of our dinner included sharing small plates of meatballs drowning in sauce, sliced eggplant cooked with tomato sauce and cheese, and a colorful tricolore salad with three bitter greens, cured ricotta, sundried tomatoes, and chives. The Sorrentina gnocchi was average, just not the best gnocchi we have ever tried. An interesting section on their menu is the Fritters – options like beer-battered cauliflower, crispy calzone bites, mustard battered red onion rings, and beef pork cheese arancini balls.