Absolutely. I have loved Chicago Style (Connies, Edwardos, Gino’s East, and all their ilk), I have loved dozens of NY/Brooklyn pie places, but when I had the pizza at Di Matteo and two others in Naples, it was truly unique and fantastic. They only had two flavors, the pizza cooked for 43-45 seconds and was on our table within 10 seconds thereafter. They were not mind blowing meals, but that was really fantastic pizza and experience.
The high temperature and brief cooking time in those neapolitan wood-fired pizza ovensreally do make a huge difference. 800 F on the oven floor and around 1000 degrees F in the dome does wonders for the product, truly.
There are some foods where the difference between mediocre and transcendental is real. Pizza is one, sushi another. Using wood or coal at high temperatures, using thinnish crusts quickly charred on the surface, quality olive oil and artisanal cheese, fresh tomato sauce and herbs… It adds up.
Yes. The pizza in Italy is very good.
The place listed as the best pizza in Nebraska is a good choice. La Casa is really great.
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Indeed. Obviously, it depends on the style you’re going for, but Neapolitan pizza is very basic in its ingredients. The tomato “sauce” is usually nothing but crushed tomatoes with a bit of salt. It’s all in the quality of the dough, the tomatoes, and the cheese. Heck, a pizza marinara won’t even have the cheese, just the tomato and a bit of oregano, olive oil, and garlic. Yet, done right, it can be sublime.
In my experience there is okay pizza and good pizza. I’ve never had amazing pizza that I recall.
Good pizza would include places like pizza king, giordanos, a few places that sell new york style slices (large and flat), etc.
Okay would be almost everywhere else I’ve eaten (dozens if not a hundred different brands of pizzas).
Eh. I live in Indiana and have eaten at Jockamo’s upper crust. I would rate Jockamos in the lower 30% of restaurant pizzas I’ve ever eaten. I wasn’t impressed at all.
I agree. I’ve never had anything inedible (meaning, not spoiled, undercooked, etc.) Stuff like Little Caesar’s $5 things aren’t bad, they’re just pretty bland. And it’s not like chains are somehow unique; there’s a bakery which does pizza a lot of my co-workers love for some reason. My opinion of it is it’s no better than a hot & ready; just a slab of meh bread, with minimal tasteless sauce, a thin layer of meh cheese.
I will mention Twin Trees in Central NY. There are 3 or 4 satellite locations, too. They cut the pizza in long rectangular strips, not wedges, but it’s the pizza that is so much better than any others. A thin but chewy crust, tons of cheese, fresh tasting spices, olive oil, tangy sauce. Toppings are all scrumptious. It is to a mundane chain pizza as a diamond is to cubic zirconia. (there’s a time and place for both in the world, but really, the difference is remarkable.)
Does anybody prefer their pizza cut in anything but wedges?
What kind of pizza? If I’m having a crispy crust pie in a bowling alley, then “tavern-cut” is preferred. Sicilian needs to be rectangular. I’d sell your mother to Aldebarian slavers for the pizza at a sadly now closed dive called The Mug, which cut their pizzas with non-rectangular right-angle cuts. (One cut across the equator, spin the pie 90 degrees and cut into 2-2 1/2" inch wide strips.)
The rest can be wedges.
I like deep-pan pizza cut into squares.
And, I always order my wedge-cut pizza “double cut.” It’s a cheap way to get twice the pizza.
I actually think I Fratelli and Atomic Pie (founded by a bunch of ex-Campisi’s guys) are better for that kind of pizza than Campisi’s.
As mentioned above, depends on the pizza. Chicago-style thin crust (and much of the thin crust around the Midwest) better lends itself to a square “tavern cut.” The crust tends to be crispier and crackier than something like a New York style pizza or a Neapolitan pie. A couple times I’ve see the variation silenus describes where they come out in strips like this. Cutting it into wedges just would seem really odd to me. Sicilian and thick pan styles (like Detroit) are generally rectangular.
When I make my own pizza, I tend to use a tavern cut, since I typically do a crispier style of pizza at home.
Wow, I did know this was a thing. I will definitely be checking these guys out in the near future.
Thank you for sharing.
What is double cut and how could it possibly double the size of the pizza? 
Very complicated physics.
But what’s a “tomato pie”? Maybe we should ask Loach. Your linked image looks like a pizza to me, but Google Images shows things that should qualify as pizza, and things that look like, uh, pie made from tomatoes.
A Detroit style pizza is unarguably pizza; but depending on what a tomato pie really is, I’m not so sure.
While one could cut a square, Detroit style into triangles (not wedges), why would you want to? You’d be losing the best part: the fried cheese “crust.”
When I think of “tomato pie,” I actually think of something other than the Trenton tomato pie. I think of something that looks like a Sicilian pizza–something like this. Then there’s the Trenton tomato pie, and then actual pies made from tomatoes.
The “tomato pie” in the best pizzas in the US link is of the Trenton tomato pie variety, and the image I linked to is an image of the tomato pie from the restaurant mentioned in the article under “New Jersey.”