In reading the article, I realized that the author has no appreciation for good pizza.
That’s not true at all. Richman is a fantastic and knowledgeable food writer. A little arrogant at times, but the one thing he isn’t is ignorant or unappreciative. The man’s a New Yorker and a James Beard award winner.
It’s the consumer. It’s a pain in the ass on many fronts (but not the profit front, as you definitely pay for each topping), but the pizza isn’t balanced. It’s also more of a pain to cook and get out of the pan, from the restaurant’s viewpoint.
Also, I also understand people that may prefer a couple, or a few toppings, but to openly bitch just because something is pepperoni only is a mindset I don’t get either.
Nonsense, and please put away that broad brush. I prefer thin, crispy crust pizza, and several million people where I grew up in Chicago would agree – thin, non-floppy crust is extremely common in Chicago and really darned good stuff. Deep-dish pizza is all fine and good, but is not the only, or even the most commonly consumed pizza in that area.
Ah, I gather you used to cook these monstrosities, unless I’m reading too much into your reply. I can see where a seven-topping fiasco pizza would get annoying to the person who has to cook it. 
I’m glad to see Pepe’s on the list. I love Pepe’s pies – good and simple.
I understand that Sally’s is popular, but I have never eaten there. Every once in a while we try, but the total disregard for their potential customers is too obvious. Special persons get to enter through the back door, while the rest of us stand outside on queue for hours.
Not sure I completely agree. Around here–despite deep dish being the most well-known–Chicago really is a thin, cracker-crust pizza town. I find similar thin styles in Milwaukee, St. Louis, and other parts of the midwest. We do have thicker styles, but the really thin styles seem to be where the tastes are at. I also wouldn’t call most East Coast pizza a “bread pie,” either. Pizzas from famous places like Totonno’s, Grimaldi’s, Pepe’s, etc., are pretty damned similar in approach to Neapolitan pies. The only difference I really see between those East Coast styles and Neapolitan pizza is the type of flour used. Americans tend to use AP or high-gluten flour for their dough, while Neapolitans use 00 (low protein) flour for their dough.
Also, there’s thick pizza styles to be found in Italy. Look at pizza al taglio (pizza rustica), for instance. Those are about as thick as pan styles in the US. Plus you’ve got some thicker Sicilian styles as well as some topped focaccias (which, yes, aren’t called “pizza”) that are similar to some of the breadier styles of pizza available in the US.
I’m guessing he did Chicago style (?) I made pizza for 3 years in my late teens and it never even occured to me or my co-workers that lots of toppings were annoying. We only made pan pizzas for ourselves, though, so maybe making those all the time is more annoying.
I like all kinds. A thinner New York style pizza is generally better with fewer toppings, and I can even enjoy it with just cheese, but the thicker it gets the more toppings it needs IMO, to compensate for having a mouth full of dough.
Dude. When the Italians put black olives on the pizza, they LEAVE THE PITS IN. Think about it. What the hell are you supposed to do with that?
I do exactly that quite often. Except that its for mexican food. Sauce, peppers, onions, refried beans, some hot sauce and spices, and a cheese or three. Maybe some meat on rare occasion.
I’ll have to work on my pizza in a bowl next.
I haven’t had Italian pizza before but those that have heard that it is not better than american pizza, especially the ones that you can find in New York or San Fransisco.
I’ve only been to Pepe’s, so I can’t comment on the others, but in my experience the crust was in between American thickness and Italian thickness. You could still eat a slice with your hands. I like Pepe’s okay (better than most American pizza), but I felt it was very different from most Italian pizza, especially the crust.
I agree with you, and that would pretty much reflect on the high-gluten vs. low-gluten flour differences of American and Italian pizzas. But I guess I don’t really find those East Coast-Neapolitan styles that much different from more delicate pure Italian styles. The emphasis still is on crust, with nice blistering on the edges and char marks on the underside, sparseness of toppings, etc. Pepe’s is perhaps more rigid than some of the other pizzas mentioned in the article
When most people think of American pizza, I think they think of something that’s quite different than Pepe’s or Grimaldi’s or Totonno’s. For example, here’s Pizza Bianco, the author’s fourth favorite pizza. Here’s Great Lake, his favorite (in Chicago, woo hoo!). Here’s Lucali, his number two. I think all those have more in common with a Neapolitan pizza than what I believe most people think of when they think of an American pizza.
Original Italian pizza from Naples can be eaten with your hands. The stuff that has popped up all over the rest of Italy (after American tourists kept asking about it on their vacations) is cracker thin and not sliced.
Neapolitan pizza looks like this.
Neapolitan pizza can most certainly be eaten with the hands. In fact, they call it eating it “libretto” (book) style. It’s perfectly acceptable.
The cracker crust in St. Louis is much thiner and crisper than that in Chicago. There is a place by me in Southern Missouri that sells Chicago thin crust, and when they described it to me they said it wasn’t a “cracker” crust. Of course, I told them I was born and raised in the Chicago area so I know exactly what they meant. As a Chicago ex-pat that hasn’t lived there in ten years, I can tell you that other styles are similar enough to the Chicago thin-crust that I’m not particularly starved it when I visit. On the other hand, the Chicago deep dish and stuffed pizza’s are entirely non-existant outside of Chicago. I know Uno’s has branches everywhere, but I’ve never been happy with them. I think maybe I don’t like Uno’s.
I saw Alan Richman and a selection of his favorite pizza’s on the Today show and I agree that he doesn’t particularly like American pizza. The pizza’s he showed were all identical crust wise with only a variation is bizzaro toppings. I’ll agree that a place makes a good pizza when first it produces a good sausage, mushrooms, onions and green peppers pizza. If it can’t do that well, then there is no need to get fancy.
It depends where you go here. I consider cracker crust one that is thin and crispy all the way through, like a cracker. Something like Candlelight pizza in Chicago is pretty much as thin as you can get without it all falling apart. It’s pretty much the thinnest pizza I’ve ever had, with a close second to Zaffiro’s in Milwaukee. But, yeah, the average Chicago tavern pizza is probably slightly thicker than St. Louis or Wisconsin thin styles, but I find them crispier and more cracker-like than thin crusts I’ve had anywhere outside the Midwest. It seems to be a Midwestern style, even down to the square party cut.
But, like you, the sausage, mushroom, green pepper, and onion pizza is my baseline for Chicago-style thin crust. But I find those toppings can get a little much on an Italian-influenced pizza. If I had to pick one style to eat for the rest of my life, it would probably have to be the styles Richman has a preference for, but it would be a sad world where I would only have the choice of one style of pizza to eat.
IMO The thing about the sausage, mushroom, onion and green pepper pizza that makes it so good for evaluating a pizza chain, is that it can be done so badly. I grew up with freshly sliced peppers and onions. The sausage was little blobs of fresh italian sausage cooked on the pizza. The cheese, I think thanks to Wisconsin, was as fresh and stringy but not oily. When I went to college, I had my first non-chicago pizza. Green peppers and onions on a pizza meant a few chopped little bits, the sausage was like dried rabbit droppings and the pizza had to be mopped of oil. I’m not talking about Domino’s, I’m talking about the pizza places that everybody talked up like they were the greatest thing ever. The bigger cities have their styles, but small town USA has a pizza problem.
I think once you cross the Rockies going west, things go to heck faily quickly. But, yes, you can get Chicago thin-crust in Wisconsin, in east Missouri, lots of places in the midwest. AFAIK, you can’t get it at all in Central California, and I’m very starved for it if I get a chance to visit family in Chicago.
I ate once at the Santa Clara Uno’s (which is no longer there; Uno’s surviving franchises around here are in Antioch and Modesto, of all places) and it was entirely unremarkable. Perhaps the style doesn’t travel well. I have seen pizza places that advertise in stuffed pizza here, but it’s not a style I prefer, so I can’t speak to its authenticity, but I’m not hopeful.
And mushrooms. I’ve encountered places that use canned mushrooms shudder.