Chicago deep dish isn’t how most Chicagoans eat pizza anyway. Usually it’s a thin, crisp crust (but not cracker dry) cut “tavern style” into squares.
The deep dish stuff is more distinctive though so I guess everyone assumes the people of the Windy City eat giant deep slices of pizza as a regular thing.
I don’t even like NY style pizza, and I live here. So I’m not defending it as better than all other pizzas or anything. But, I have never had a “NY style pizza” in some other part of the country that had the same texture/taste as the crust on a NY pizza. It’s a combination the crust being very soft and chewy, but then the edge parts of the crust are really crispy and toasty. Even when pizza from other places has the same look, it’s a very different mouth feel.
Which is a practical application of Gauss’s Theorema Egregium:
Indeed. And even Chicago style deep dish pizza crusts aren’t particularly bready. It’s not like focaccia or something like that. Maybe 1/2" thick, maybe less. Italian style pan pizzas have thicker crusts. It’s the pile of cheese, tomatoes, and toppings that make it thick.
Yup. One of my Chicago father-in-law’s visits to Brooklyn about 20 years back saw us in a pizza joint, and him asking “What’s ‘Sicilian style?’” “Thick crust,” I said. He ordered a slice, bit into it, and sputtered “CHRIST! It’s all BREAD.”
Also, a Chicago style crust has the flavor and consistency of pie, rather than baked pizza dough. Since I’ve already consumed more calories than necessary by eating all the sauce and cheese on the sauced cheesed part, I generally toss the crusts.
If you go to Italy, you’ll see that they fold their pieces of pizza there too. Makes sense, actually. Keeps all the toppings from sliding off.
You and Donald Trump. :rolleyes:
I doubt that I’ve ever had proper New York style pizza (most of the places I’ve gotten pizza from haven’t even claimed to be NY style), but I still often find that folding the slice helps to maintain its rigidity.
Any pizza you can fold or don’t need a fork for is worthless. Might as well eat toast with ketchup.
Real Pizza (like I make) has 3 or 4 cheeses, 2 or more meats, mushrooms, peppers, onions, artichoke hearts, olives,* garlic*, tomato slices and goddamn anchovies! (post bake on the fish)
All covered (except the tomato slices) in a second huge layer of cheese, Italian spices and a light dusting of paprika.
You can’t fold it. You can pick it up, if you want, but its easier with a fork.
[drops mike]
Backs away slowly from** Gatopescado**…
How is that a pizza Gatopescado? That looks like an KFC Italian Bowl. All it needs is cigarette butts and sadness.*
*As per Jim Gaffigan.
A friend of mine from Brooklyn said that all NYC food is designed to be eaten with one hand while you are running for a subway, or from the cops.
I always thought NYC pizza were those giant 18" pizzas that were cut into sixths.
Costcos food court has some great new york style pizza.
Growing up in Cleveland, I consumed pizza maybe four or five times before moving away to New Haven at age 17 for college. There, in the Holy City of Sally’s Apizz, Pepe’s, Naples, Yorkside, and Broadway Pizza, the scales fell from my eyes. Lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn since, happily eating pizza.
If I have to pay a visit to Cleveland now, I stick with fried pierogi or a kielbasa sandwich. I don’t know what’s up with the Italian-Americans there – and I grew up with LOTS of them, who made their own excellent wine and cooked many other great Ital-Amer dishes – but they never seemed to master the pizza pie.
We cut them into eighths. Although sometimes I have them cut it into six if I don’t think I can eat eight.
(Snare drum/cymbal)
I worked with a guy from New York who would take two slices of pizza and put them together with the crusts on the outside and the tops against each other and he would eat them like a sandwich holding on to the crusts.
Half? Three-eighths, max. One quarter, maybe. The crust is short, culinary speaking, but the orange pools of grease come from the sausage. Pronounced “sahss-ich.”
Them’s fightin’ words! Or would be, if they weren’t true.
We visited NYC four years ago. Arrived in the afternoon jet-lagged, me to some extent but the wife especially so. She needed sleep badly and was almost comatose. Our hotel was on Broadway on the Upper West Side, and instead of dragging her out to go eat somewhere for dinner, I roamed around the block to see what I could find. On the corner was a nice deli, where I ordered a large pizza, not realizing quite how large large was. Fuck me! That thing was gigantic! Took it back and we ended up munching on it for two or three days. Luckily, we had a refrigerator and a microwave in the room. Nice and thick. About the best pizza we’ve ever had, and we’ve had lots. I don’t recall it being crunchy though.
The usual question in New Haven is whether you prefer the pizza from Sally’s Apizza or from Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. The correct answer is in fact Modern Apizza (formerly called State Street Apizza).