I tend to deliberately order more pizza than we will eat. If there is anything I love more than hot, fresh pizza, it’s cold pizza out of the fridge the next day. Weird, too, because I usually can’t stand to even LOOK at leftovers when they are cold out of the fridge…I have to get my husband to warm them up until they are HOT, or it makes me feel squeamish. But cold pizza…yum yum.
Oh, in regards to the OP…I live in an area with a lot of Italian restaurants, and some of them have pizza by the slice. The weird thing is, and maybe other Chicagoans like Kalhoun can back me up on this…the pizza-by-the-slice is different pizza from the Chicago-style thin crust you get when you order a whole pizza. I can’t explain the difference, exactly (other than the obvious, which is that Chicago-style thin crust is always cut into squares, as Kalhoun mentioned). The crust tends to be thicker, and just doesn’t taste the same. Anyone have any insight into this?
Plenty of places around here do. Heck, I just a couple of slices for lunch just now. There are plenty of places in NYC and down the Jersey shore that sell by the big slice.
Right! A true thin-crust pizza probably wouldn’t lend itself to the slice ‘n’ fold approach. It’s too thin and (hopefully) too crisp. Lou Malnati’s is strictly fork-and-knife deep dish. It’s a whole 'nother animal; a thing of beauty in it’s own right.
This is not a problem around Toronto, or even in the small town I live in. Easy to get a sit-down slice, choosing from 10 or so possibilities.
So, we agree that the slices I’m getting aren’t regular Chicago-style thin crust, and they defintely aren’t the Unos/Malnati’s/Giordano’s-style Chicago pan pizza, so what are they? I suspect they are some kind of frozen/prepared-in-advance-fast-food-pizzas, similar to what you get at Sbarro’s. They aren’t bad, but they aren’t as good as when you order a whole pizza.
Fork & knife? Pshaw.
Right. It’s almost like a Boboli-type texture…very bready as opposed to crusty. It is always my third choice for pizza. It invariably tastes “cheap.”
Ding ding ding ding ding. 
That’s what we get at our cafeteria here at work.
Which is why I always buy the mozzarella sticks instead.
Many people don’t consider it “pizza.” But whatever you call them, they’re awesome.
Oh, I agree. When I was in Chicago, I sustained myself solely on beer and deep dish pizza. I’m just saying it’s so thick it can’t actually bend or fall, so silverware is not needed.
In Vegas we have a pizzeria (Broadway pizza) ran by two brothers from NYC – Sells pizza by the slice or by the pie. Either way it is the best pizza I’ve ever had. Nice crisp thin crust, huge slices, and toppings piled on toppings…great stuff!
tomndebb makes a good point about the calzone/stromboli question. Problem: many of the places that make these make them so huge that you’re back to the leftover problem. True, I can stuff one down, but I prefer not to. I’ve decided to moderate my food vices, not give them up. This means small portions. Slices fit the bill. BTW, slices are usually sold by adding toppings to plain pizza before heating them up. There’s no need to have a huge supply of pies on hand, although I’ve noticed that places that sell slices nearly always keep at least two pies on hand, plain and pepperoni.
Sbarro’s pizza? Feh. I’ve noticed their pizza looks good, but for some reason tastes sorta bland. You have to jolt it up with a shitload of salt, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes. Even then it still taste like cardboard. It looks good, though. Besides, going to a mall is inconvenient, and if I was in the neighborhood of Lakeforest Mall I’d rather go to the Costco across the street. Pizza’s a little doughy but not bad, and you can’t beat the price. The atmosphere? Not so much.
I ain’t buying the foot traffic thing. Other fast food places manage. Why can’t pizzerias? And remember, Three Brothers pulls it off. Why not anyone else? Or am I missing someone? Pizza Blitz on Buckeystown road in Frederick is pretty damn good…and 20 miles away. And, I might add, they have a huge counter of something like 8 specialty pizzas that they sell slices from. Once again: why can’t anyone else? There’s a McD/BK/Wendy’s/Taco Bell/etc. every 100 yards. Why no slice pizzerias?
One last note: let’s all engage in a long round of embarassed throat clearing concerning people who eat pizza with a knife and fork. No names, please; they know who they are.
Name me some places in Montgomery County that have lots of foot traffic. Pizza by the slice would work inside malls. It would work on streets with lots of people walking by. It doesn’t work in sit-down places or in places whose business is nearly all take-out. They could offer pizza by the slice, but they would always end up throwing out a half-pizza’s-worth of each kind of pizza they offer at the end of the day (and probably once or twice during the day as the pizza got cold). There wouldn’t be any profit on pizza by the slice at those places.
Greenbelt, eh? Well, how about the Three Brothers in Bladensburg (yeah, I know the Greenbelt location is in a mall)? Not in MoCo, you say? Okay, howzabout the Three Brothers in Rockville? Laurel? Beltsville? All in convenient small strip malls, not giant enclosed ones. And all sell slices. Note to non-MDers: the above locations aren’t near each other except for the Beltsville and Laurel ones (about 3-4 miles apart), so don’t think the market is already saturated by slice selling pizzerias.
I reiterate: Three Brothers makes it work. They haven’t saturated the market with locations. Why can’t anyone else do this?
I used to run a Little Caesar’s pizzeria. They sold slices, but in certain times (unless it expressly had a busy enough schedule to facilitate selling them all day long). Foot traffic is the answer to the question.
Bladensburg, Laurel, Beltsville, and Greenbelt are all in Prince George’s Country. Only Rockville, of the towns you mention, is in Montgomery County. Perhaps it’s just my perceptions, but Montgomery County seems to me to be dominated by huge open-air malls (sometimes with indoor malls attached) arranged on three sides around a gigantic parking lot. Everybody shopping there parks in those malls and runs into the store and then back out to their car. They might possibly call a pizzeria first and order a pizza to take home, which then pick up while running from store to store, but they don’t order pizza by the slice.
If they want to sit down, they will order a whole pizza, since they are usually with a group. Besides, isn’t pizza too downscale for people in Montgomery County? If they want to eat out, they would eat something more upscale than pizza.
No. Pizza’s not downscale. And the part about the Three Brothers being in P.G. County: true enough, but that doesn’t negate my point. It’s not like P.G. County has got loads of counter service pizzerias that sell slices. It’s just Three Brothers. I reiterate: why can’t anyone else do it?
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Long live the square!
And Sbarro’s is gross.
I’ve never been to a pizza by the slice place. But in STL the pizza is cut into SQUARES. Mmmm squares.
If for some reason y’all happen by Knoxville, I can’t recommend Roman’s Pizza highly enough.
They solve the foot-traffic problem by being next to the dollar theater.