Almost all of the pizza I eat is provided for at work. We’ll order maybe four or five kinds and one square of each kind is just about the perfect amount for lunch but allows for the variety. I don’t want a large slice of the BBQ or ranch dressing sauced pies but 5 square inches of each is a nice little sample.
I like Three Brothers, but I live right near them and they’re really primarily a Maryland chain (I don’t think they have any stores in the city).
The bad bad is Pizza Movers. I seriously don’t understand how that place stays in business. Must be dirt cheap.
Yeah, just looked at their website. $8.99 for an extra large (18"). I’m no richy-rich fancy-pants but I feel like it should cost more than that. Hot circle of garbage, indeed.
Yeah, wood fired Roman and Neapolitan style pizza is definitely very soggy, especially towards the center. I have to eat it with utensils. But it’s delicious.
Wow. I would expect an 18" plain cheese pizza around here to be around twenty bucks. Maybe sixteen at the low end, but nine bucks? I just checked my local places – which don’t cater to a richie rich community – and it’s $18-$22 for an 18-inch plain cheese pizza.
I haven’t had that experience. Good wood fired piizza is almost charred on the bottom, not what I’d call soggy. It is thin, however, and you might need to support it with second hand if you pick it up.
If it is soggy, there is probably too much stuff on it.
No, Neapolitan is known for being soft towards the center. ETA: Just a random Youtube search, but look at the pizzas here. Quote: “I’ve heard it described even as soupy, especially in the middle.” That’s my experience. Great stuff. I mean, fantastic stuff, but, yes, a bit soggier in the middle than is expected by American styles of pizza.
There aren’t very many of them left anymore, but when I was young one of the biggest pizza chains was Shakey’s Pizza. The original Shakey’s was at 57th and J. Streets in Sacramento, CA. My parents met there.
I owe my existence to Sacramento pizza. If anyone here thinks they can top that, take your best shot.
I think the softer crust of Neapolitan pizzas works well when eaten at a table, perhaps with utensils, while the crispy crust of a typical NY slice works well eaten out of hand, perhaps as you’re walking down the street. Food changes as needs change.
Even Domino’s charges $15.49 for a 16" extra large.
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St. Louis dopers? You gonna just sit there and take that from a Chicagoan?
Ever been to Lake Tahoe Pizza Co? It was okay - not spectacular but pretty good. I went for the beer, though.
Wait a minute…are Scientologists even allowed to eat pizza?
You’d be surprised. San Jose pizza wouldn’t necessarily be a bucket list town, but there are some good joints here and there.
Detroit style is absolutely the best. But like so many other cities, you’ve got to go to a place that sells Detroit style. By weight, I’d expect that in the Detroit area, Detroit pizza is somewhere in the 1% range of all pizzas sold, simply because we have so much damned pizza. Both Little Caesar’s and Dominos are Detroit-area originating national chains. So is Jet’s. Hungry Howie’s, too. And all of the smaller chains, mom & pops, etc., that don’t sell much Detroit style pizza. Don’t come to the area, order a round pizza, and declare that you’ve had a Detroit style.
I lived in Chicagoland for much of a year back in the late 1990s. As a bachelor then, pizza was my main diet, and it was mostly “meh,” probably for the very same reasons I describe most Detroit area pizza above. On my last trip to Chicago, though, I did have an awesome pizza. It was at an Italian bistro somewhere near UofC, and the ingredients really, really made it special. I normally subscribe to the credo that “lots of toppings do not a good pizza make,” but in this case, all of the excellent Italian meats made this thing fantastic.
In December I had some authentic NYC pizza, including at two spots New Yorkers highly recommended. My hope was that I wouldn’t be subject to the Detroit/Chicago problem mentioned above, because these were two spots highly recommended for true NYC pizza. My thoughts about both of them were that they were pizza, so not, you know, inedible, but just completely and totally “meh.”
But I get it, you have to be a New Yorker to appreciate catsup on a cracker with some cheese. I don’t expect that most New Yorker’s would appreciate our Sicilian-derived Detroit style, either, because it’s simply not what they imagine when they picture pizza.
Growing up in the Mid-Atlantic area I found most of the good pizza at local places, mom and pop spots, the boardwalk etc was pretty much a close representation of “New York Pizza.” So I think to an an extent, most of the good pizzas in that radius may be in a specific location but owe something to NYC.
That’s how I would describe most pizza in Ohio, where I live now, and much of the Midwest. There is nothing about New York style pizza resembling a cracker and the sauce is nothing like catsup. It’s real pizza dough, hand-tossed (with bubbles if it’s good IMHO) with high quality cheese and tomato sauce. Don’t have to be a New Yorker. I grew up in Maryland and have been to NYC once on a day trip 20 years ago. It’s just that when we got pizza, “pizza” most closely resembled New York style among the common types. It was everywhere, malls, family restaurants, etc, and that’s what pizza was. We knew about (and ate) deep dish, Chicago style, french bread pizzas, and so on. To get “regular pizza” outside of the Mid-Atlantic/NE US I usually have to seek out New York style places.
As much as I hate my adopted Boston, it does have great pizza that generally follows the New York model. Even the chains like Papa Ginos are good. There are lots of variants as well but the vast majority are thin crust.
I went to a wedding reception in Chicago once that featured “Chicago style pizza” that was about 4 inched thick. I couldn’t even finish half a piece. It tasted fine but was way too rich and thick. The problem with Chicago style “pizza” is that it should be renamed to something else. It is a perfectly valid dish but it ain’t pizza and you will be disgusted if real real pizza is what you were expecting.
Detroit style pizza just looks like something we got in elementary school. It may taste great but I will never know. I don’t eat sheet pizza cut in squares anymore than I eat sandwiches that I make myself that aren’t cut into triangles. Sorry, shapes and presentation matter.
I had no idea this pizza had a name. Around here we just always called it pizza king pizza.
I didn’t know st Louis and Dayton are associated with this pizza style.
The argument for New York pizza is that (A) New York restaurants get first pick of all ingredients and chefs in the country and (B) the same New York water that makes its bagels magical goes into its pizza dough as well. Shitty pizza can happen anywhere, but all other things being equal, NY has some real advantages. But I feel like New Yorkers swear by Ray’s/Original Ray’s for the same reason Australians swear by Vegemite; some kind of wartime privation they pretend to like decades after the fact, purely as a macho posture. I still want to visit Gennaro Lombardi’s and the place in Brooklyn where Henry Hill kept almost getting whacked. Wonder if there’s a revolver taped inside the toilet tank?
I lived in DC for decades, but haven’t lived there since 2009 so my information may be dated. Good pizza places come and go. The Lost Dog Cafe in Arlington was swell, hope it’s still there and still good. Silver Spring/Wheaton has three world class Italian delis, one downtown, one in Four Corners and one in the Wheaton Triangle. If the local pizzerias are weak (and they kind of are), it’s not from a lack of available good ingredients. Ultimately, foodies in DC can tout all the Ethiopian restaurants and the South American chicken joints, but not really the pizza.
I actually researched this topic for an article a while back and one city that came up a lot is Old Forge, PA, which has two incredible Umbrian-style pizzerias across the street from each other. I have not been there yet, but it’s on my bucket list.