st Louis style pizza has a crispy, non flexible crust and this is how it is traditionally cut, into squares.
Here in Indiana, there is a chain called Pizza King. They cut their thin crust pizzas into squares as a matter of course. Their thicker, pan-style pizzas get cut into triangular slices.
When I was a kid, we regularly got our pizzas from Pizza King, and always got the thin crust. Ergo, we always got square cut. I think I may have been in my teens before I ever saw a triangular cut pizza, and I thought it was weird as hell to cut a pizza that way.
I live in the home of great pizza so it’s crazy for me to order from a chain. Good thing I consider Dominos and Pizza Hut it’s own unique category separate from authentic pizza. On rare occasions I get a craving for Dominos thin crust. It’s different than the way pizza is done here traditionally. I have never seen it cut any way other than in squares.
Not doubting your experience, but had you never seen pizza shown. . .anywhere? I mean, it’s been established that square cut is a thing in a lot of places, but I can’t recall ever having seen it shown that way on tv, or the movies or whatever.
When I was a kid (Saskatchewan in the 1980s), the nearest pizza joint would cut an extra-large pizza (round, non-thin crust) into 16 pieces. I was always slightly disappointed by the middle square pieces; there was no “handle” to hold on to and they didn’t resemble pizza slices I’d see on TV.
I suppose, if I thought about it much, I just put it down to one of those things that you see on TV, that don’t happen in real life. I think we may have had a thread or two about that. 
As an example, I sometimes heard people on TV refer to pizzas as “pies.” No one I knew had ever done that–pies have fruit in them, not pepperoni and sausage and stuff like that, obviously!–so I figured that was just one of those fake TV things. Triangles slices were probably the same kinda thing.
Please, no comments. I know that there are regions where people do call pizzas “pies.” I’m talking about my experience as a budding young know-it-all.
Midwestern me has never personally known anyone who calls a pizza a “pie,” either. But, based on hearing the term on TV over the years, I’ve always associated the term with New Yorkers (though I have no idea if that’s really accurate).
Yeah, we call it “za.”
d&r
Chicago me doesn’t know. I think pie is reasonably normal in our vocabulary, but my vocabulary is so intermixed with other dialects now that I don’t know for sure. There’s an amusing Brian Regan bit about him and his roommate splitting a “pie” regarding a misunderstanding of vocabulary, but, unfortunately, it does not appear to be available on any of the usual legal sites. (It was on Comedy Central’s site, but no longer.)
I haven’t heard ‘pizza pie’ very much in the past 50 years outside of Dean Martin singing about hitting me in the eye with the moon. Perhaps the concept of a pie goes back to pizza rustica, which is very much a pie. I doubt many people strongly connect pizza to the concept of a pie anymore.
In another thread about bread bowls, an edible type of dish, I posited that a pizza was tomato sauce, cheese, and other ingredients served on an edible plate. It really is that way for most pizza, meant to be eaten from the hand. Eating pizza with a knife and fork is a sure sign of an effete snob upon whom the delicacy is wasted.
The way I use it, it’s never “pizza pie” unless I’m deliberately channeling an old timey vibe. It’s more like, “Hey, you know any good pizza places around here?” “Yeah, Vito & Nick’s puts out a good pie.”
Are you willing to make an exception for Chicago-style deep dish?
Sure, we can exclude Chicago-style from the pizza category.
I too never heard it referred to IRL as “a pie” until I moved to FL. Possibly mixed into the local vocab by NY transplants.
Re eating it with a knife and fork (sorry OP for the further hijack), there’s a show on CNN with Stanley Tucci traveling all over Italy exploring their cuisine. The episode on pizza shows that in certain regions it is only eaten that way, except by doofish tourists
Personally, when in a restaurant, I’ll eat the first couple of bites with a knife and fork, as it’s too hot and drippy to put directly in my mouth. After that, it’s blurred hand to mouth motion.
From what I’ve seen of them I guess I’d have to.
I always eat casseroles with a fork.
Being from St. Louis, but preferring thicker crusts, I can go either way on square-cut pizza. But I always felt if you tried to eat a cracker-thin crust slice of pizza, the whole thing would shatter into a million pieces - hence the need for smaller squares.
As the author of a cookbook I used to have put it, “fingers are for picnickers and Americans.”
I’m reminded of dealing with my youngest when a toddler long ago who refused to eat her favorite food because it was the wrong shape.
Tough toenails, babygirl, more for daddy!
I do enjoy trying out every regional style/shape/cut of pizza I can find.
In my part of the Great Plains (Nebraska) it is called the ‘party cut’ (smaller squares ). Some places do it automatically unless you ask them not do, other places cut pie wedges as their default but are happy to cut into squares if requested. Depends on the place.
I worked at a Little Ceasar’s in high school (late 80s) in Florida. We called it a “party cut.” The crust there was not at all thin.
Also, on the use of “pie,” I agree that it isn’t used as “pizza pie” – at least, I’ve never heard anyone use it that way IRL. My spouse was born in Brooklyn, and when she orders from the very authentic NY-style pizza place here, she starts with, “I’d like a large pie.” I’m convinced it’s a secret code to show that she’s a real New Yorker, so she gets the special treatment or something. (Not really.) I’m not sure, though, if I’ve heard her say that when we order from other places that don’t serve that style of pizza.