Pizza across the USA

Pizza is the quintessential American food.  Forget about Italy, America has made the food its own.  Regionally there are different styles from the thin crusts of New York to the deep dishes of Chicago.  New York actually has two distinct styles, one so ubiquitous that it is doesn't even have a name but is often referred to as 'New York Style'.  The other, lesser-known style is called 'Sicilian'.

Chicago, also has two styles, but is best-known for its deep dish or stuffed pizza.  The other style is for people who are watching their weight or just don't like deep dish.  The third distinctive style is St. Louis style which is characterized by a very thin crust, toppings piled high and provel cheese that sticks to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter.  

Other styles or variations of styles exist across the country.  The midwest typically prefers a chewier crust, the west coast mostly copies the east coast but added new toppings and who knows what happens south of the Mason-Dixon line.  

On our recent trip to the east, we sampled each of the three main types.  For St. Louis, we stopped at Imo's; made a side trip to Frank Pepe's in New Haven for the New York style; and, stopped at Lou Malnatti's in Chicago for deep dish.  We were unanimous in choosing Frank Pepe's as our favorite.

Pepe's is an experience similar to Arthur Bryant's for Barbecue.  There will be a line.  The restaurant itself is an experience, with an oven the size of my living room.  We had two pies, one with sausage and the other a white clam pizza that Pepe's made famous.  Normally a red sauce kind of guy, Pepe's white clam pizza is something to write home about -- garlicky and rich with fresh clams, it is about as good as pizza gets.

We split on our second choice.  Daniel and Tanya both preferred the Chicago deep dish while I preferred the St. Louis style.  At Imo's, we had a sausage and onion pie.  In St. Louis style, the pie is cut into squares and the crust is very thin.  If the pieces were larger, the crust could not support the weight of the toppings and toppings are the main attraction.  St. Louis style is famous for toppings thicker than the crust and provel cheese that sticks to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter.

The deep dish offering from Lou Malnatti's was also a sausage pie.  It,  like the other two, was very good and had a solid layer of sausage, buried under a very good crushed tomato sauce and over a thick layer of cheese.  It had been my working assumption that St. Louis style would provide the most toppings per square inch, but after seeing the Malnatti pie, that is up for debate.  One thing is certain, Chicago and St. Louis stand head and shoulders above all other cities in developing artery clogging treats.

We also tried a Sicilian-style at Adriatico's in Columbus, OH.  It was good, but didn't measure up to the holy trinity of pizzadom mentioned above.  So what do you do when you want good pizza in Kansas City?  For New York style, Grinders is the best that we have found.  For St. Louis style, Waldo is pretty good although their cheese is not as gooey as Imo's.  The Chicago style is most difficult to find.  The best that we have found is  Pizzeria Uno and it's just not that good.