St. Louis’s Imo’s is a thin crust, circular, square-cut pizza, whose distinguishing feature is the use of Provel cheese, which is a kind of melty processed cheese product. I would consider it separate from what appears to be Dayton pizza. But if you’re lumping all those together, you may as well take the pies of the upper Midwest that are similarly served and cut (like I said, Chicago’s day-to-day pizza is thin and cut like that.)
I completely disagree. Plus it does have a name: deep dish (a la Unos or Malnati’s). And then there’s stuffed (a la Giordano’s). And then there’s pan (a la Pequod’s.) Pizza as a generic term has a wide range.Even in Italy you have pizzas from your Neapolitan styles, thin crust, minimal toppings, soft centers to your pizzas al taglio, which are more like foccacia, thick, cooked in sheet pans and served in rectangles. You have pizza without red sauce. You have pizza topped with potatoes and rosemary. You even have pizzas without the ton of cheese on a typical New York style pie (see the classic pizza marinara.)
“Pizza” describes a wide range of bread-based dishes. I can’t see how deep dish fails definitionally. It’s arguably more familiar and recognizable as pizza to Americans (it has crust, red sauce, cheese, and toppings like sausage or pepperoni) to something like a pizza al taglio topped with zucchini and uncooked prosciutto.
I guess this is the style that folks are disparaging as “ketchup on a cracker.” But, like any style of pizza, it can be good or bad. I’ve had great pizzas of all kinds of styles, bud if I had to live with only one style of pizza for the rest of my life, it would be Marion’s cracker-thin crust cut into tiny squares.
As far as what is Dayton-style, it seems to be similar to St. Louis, but it doesn’t have the provel cheese. I haven’t had St. Louis style, so I don’t know how similar the tomato sauce is.
(One midwestern pizza that I hate is Columbus’s Donato’s Pizza. Yuk. … We used to joke that if there’s a Donato’s Pizza, there must be a Pizzato’s Doughnuts.)
Before this thread, I thought there were only three kinds of pizza. Chicago deep dish, New York style and traditional.
I didn’t know the cracker crust, square cut slices, crumbled toppings of pizza king was associated with any cities. I don’t know much about provel cheese. We just called it pizza king pizza. Didn’t know st Louis and Dayton are associated with this style.
I also didn’t know rectanglular deep dish was known as Detroit style.
Is traditional pizza (regular sized triangle shapes on a 12-14" pie, the kind you find at most pizza chains) known for any region?
To be specific, provel is associated with St. Louis, and most strongly with Imo’s in St. Louis. I do not believe it is used anywhere outside that area on pizzas (looks like it may dip across the border into Illinois.)
Wikipedia has a reasonable run-down of the major styles in the US. And you can even drill down more finely, if you wish. (Like I said above, even Chicago’s deep dish comes in three different versions: traditional deep dish (single crust), stuffed (has an additional thin layer of dough on top which is covered in sauce–you may have seen stuffed pizza at a Sbarro’s in the mall, but our stuffed pizza is a bit different), and pan (thicker crust than deep dish, which should not have a very thick crust. Pequod’s, Gulliver’s, and Burt’s are examples of this style.)) Oh, and then there’s this crazy thing called pizza pot pie, which I’ve never had, and is only served, to my knowledge, at that one place.
Yes, some of those come closer to “ketchup on a cracker” than I would describe New York style, which is not crackery at all, in my experience. Of the pizza places I’ve visited, the one that most defines the cracker style for me is Zaffiro’s in Mlwaukee. Superficially, it may look like a Chicago thin crust, but the crust is thinner and much more crispy crackery than what you’d get here. It’s also a delicious pizza. The sauce isn’t anything I’d describe as “ketchup.” Even my Sicilian friend from Queens loved the pizza there. His attitude on pizza is: I don’t care what kind it as, as long as it tastes good.
I tried to give a definition in an earlier post. A good pizza city is a metropolitan area where you are never more than a few miles from a great slice of pizza. Preferably more than one place. You shouldn’t have to make a special trip to get great pizza.
If you want to try it at home, I’ve found this recipe (Youtube link) worked a treat. Victory Pig is not one of the Old Forge places, but it’s in the same part of PA, just a bit down the road towards Wilkes-Barre. Here are my results making it earlier this year. And here. It was literally the best pizza I had ever made at home. I’m actually partial to thinner styles of pizza, but this works great in a home oven, and the crumb of that dough is just perfect. Thick, yet somehow light and airy, with a crisp bottom from the oil (similar in many ways to a Detroit-style pizza.) Give it a shot if you’ve ever got the time and inclination. It compared favorably to the Old Forge pizza I’ve had (we ended up at Revello’s.)
Rosati’s is the place I was talking about, they have a location a couple of miles from my house. But I’m not necessarily looking for Chicago style, but I guess what would be called Philly style (although to me it’s just “pizza”, every other style is a variant).
And yes, the middle pieces of the Rosati’s pizza have a nice texture but the majority of the pie has an overly crunchy cracker-like consistency.
Yeah, I admit, I may be nitpicking or too finely slicing up my pizza taxonomy. It’s definitely cracker-like compared to standard East Coast styles of pizza. But I find frozen thin crust pizzas are more crackery than your standard Chicago thin (though I suppose that depends on how you bake your pizza.) So it depends on how specific you want to be.
Cassano’s. Man, that takes me back. Thin crust, cut in squares, toppings all the way to the edge…delicious! And the steak sandwich!
Now I am hungry. And I will disappointed with whatever I eat. 
I really didn’t have much pizza during my 5 years in NYC that I considered “great”. However, I never lived or worked anywhere in the city where I couldn’t have a good, solid slice in my hand in less than 5 minutes (unless the line was really long).
I wouldn’t put Atlanta on any list of great pizza cities. But we do have several gourmet, Neapolitan brick oven-fired pizzerias: Cafe Antico, Varasano’s, Sapori di Napoli (founded by a pair of brothers from Naples), and Fritti. The latter imported a builder from Naples to build their brick oven, and Neapolitan pizzuolos to use it.
For hey-let’s-go-get-pizza pizza, I haven’t found any great restaurants. Our go-to is Fellini’s and Cameli’s, both of which are acceptable, but neither would I call world-shaking.
Sort of, IMO. NY pizza is HUGE slices; the folding is necessary for structural integrity because of the size of the slice and the thin crust.
ETA: Am I the only one who likes Sicilian style pizza?
A good Sicilian is wonderful. I still remember summer 1994, attending summer school at Harvard, and having my first Sicilian slice at Pinnochio’s in Cambridge. Wonderful stuff. There’s exactly two food memories I have from my two months in town: that and the hot dogs at (now defunct) Elsie’s.
To those considering trying Detroit style in Detroit; IMO, it’s best if you ask for it well done. Most place seem to be cutting the cooking time shorter and shorter so that the crispy fried cheese on the edges is short-changed. All the crispy you can get is better:)
As the wise, late Terry Pratchett noted, burnt crunchy bits are one of the four food groups.
When I was growing up a bakery near my temple sold great Sicilian pizza. On my last trip to NY there was a pizza place within feet from my apartment. They were out of Sicilian when I went and their regular pizza sucked.
I’m from NY, but 40 years ago anyway the best pizza was in Champaign Illinois, specifically Papa Del’s. Thick pan, best sausage ever. Good enough so that when I worked in NJ someone who went to the U of I also would bring back a stack of pies in dry ice for all the alums.
I’m from New York, but that beat anything I’ve ever eaten there.
If there’s one thing I miss about New England, it’s hot oven grinders.
The best city for pizza was Whitefish, MT, but I understand Truby’s has closed. 