Pizza - New York vs. Chicago

Everyone loves their pizza, and in some homes, it's more American than apple pie. But where that home lays on the map, determines what the pizza looks and tastes like...and it can vary drastically. And you know what? Some are very adamant that their pizza is the best style.

The line has been drawn in the sauce...

For instance, if you grew up in the Mid-Atlantic or Northeast as I did, the New York-style pizza with its fold-in-half slice of cheesy goodness is the only way to go. Pizza is served with a soft, thin bottom crust and airy outer crust and typically only adorned with one or two toppings, though that can vary. Whether in Little Italy, a mom-and-pop shop in Washington Heights, or even select locations across the river in New Jersey, it's the only description that passes for real pizza.

While New Yorkers are reveling in their tomato pie glory, 800 miles to the west, Chicago residents are shaking their heads and sinking their teeth into nearly three inches of pizza heaven they refer to as (deep) dish. A top and lower crust of dough stuffed with more than a pound of cheese, meat, vegetables, or whatever topping pleases the diner, the Chicago-style pizza no doubt leaves the stomach more than content...if not downright stuffed in its own right!
How can the objective diner choose between the proverbial apples and oranges of pizza making?

But wait...that's not all of the options!

As if this generational battle isn't complicated enough, throw in the St. Louis-style pizza, with it's thin, cracker crust or then the more specialty, gourmet pizzas with their exotic cheeses and toppings! For those pizza lovers looking to avoid retail locations altogether, there are a number of brands of simple and gourmet pizzas of all types available at most local grocers. FINALLY, you have those DIYers who insist that the best pizza clearly is the one blessed by their own flour-covered hands.

So in this great pizza oven we call the United States of America, what kind of pizza reigns supreme, which style tops all the rest, and which are just plain cheesy?

Well, my suggestion is to follow mom's general rule of thumb, "How do you know whether you like it, if you don't at least try it?"

Truer words never were spoken, and indulging in some delectable pizza for "research" sounds like a great plan, even for a biased NY-style lover like myself!

Ci Vediamo!
(See you soon!)