Ed Ranks Regional Pizza Styles

Nectar of the gods.

Pizza, it's delicious! Let's talk about the various regional styles. In the United States, I mean. I'm not willing to dedicate enough time and effort to figure out various Italian and worldwide styles that might exist.

 9. St. Louis

St. Louis-style pizza is much like all other St. Louis-style cuisines (such as St. Louis BBQ), e.g. MEDIOCRE. Haha, got you, St. Louis! Seriously though. This style of pizza is on an unleavened large cracker and served with a disgusting style of processed cheese that I've never heard of and which isn't really available outside of the city. You can keep your cheese and you can keep your pizza, STL. You can also keep Nelly. Please. Nobody wants Nelly. We'll keep Ozzy Smith though. 

8. Quad City

Not only had I not heard of Quad City-style pizza prior to researching this article, I had never even heard of the Quad Cities. Apparently, they are "a region of five cities in northwest Illinois and southeastern Iowa, consisting of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa; and Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline in Illinois." That's right, the QUAD (Latin for "four") Cities consist of FIVE (English for "Five") cities.  Out of principle I want to rank this last without any further research, but then I saw that St. Louis Pizza was served on a damn cracker and I knew I honestly couldn't rank Quad City pizza lower than cracker pizza.

The foil under it is actually more appetizing.

7. Jumbo Slice

Jumbo Slice is found only in Washington, D.C. In principle it should rank up there with New York-style pizza. Because it's (again, in principle) just a really, really, really large New York-style pizza.  Unfortunately, every Jumbo Slice I've ever eaten tastes like floppy, wet cardboard that's dripping in grease. Not necessarily the type of grease you'd use in food though. More like whatever the active ingredient in Soul Glo is.

6. California 

Sorry Wolfgang Puck, "gourmet" pizza is dumb. I know you think this is fancy by putting it in a wood-grilled oven and putting on ingredients that can include chicken, BBQ sauce, goat cheese, salmon, broccoli, and crap like that. No.

5. Greek

Greek-style pizza is cooked in a shallow pan, although it's nothing like the Chicago "pan" style you might be thinking of. It's usually heavy on sauce and lighter on cheese (I actually have no problem with this). Technically it can still be Greek-style even if it doesn't have traditional "Greek" toppings like feta, olives, and onion. Usually you find this pizza in Greek shops that sell other stuff like gyros.

4. New Haven

Technically, I wouldn't even know what New Haven-style pizza is, if it weren't for the Pete's Apizza chain. It's pretty much your standard New York-style crust, but with less tomato sauce and grated pecorino romano instead of mozzarella. The "white clam pie" is the most famous type of New Haven-style pizza, yes... with clams on it. It's actually pretty good.

Like Chicago Pizza. But square. See? Different!

3. Detroit

Detroit-style pizza is like Chicago Pizza except that it's usually square shaped and the crust can be even deeper and crustier (it's typically twice-baked) than Chicago Deep Dish. Niiiiiiice. It also used brick cheese instead of mozzarella. Detroit is in Michigan though, so this can be excused.

2. Chicago

I don't know why there are so many Chicago-style pizza haters. Chicago pizza is fantastic and delicious. Deep Dish rules! And were you aware that there were actually two different Chicago deep dish styles? One of them is the more traditional deep dish that you're probably familiar with, and the other one is more of a "stuffed" pizza. Both are delicious. Stop complaining about it, New Yorkers. It's perfectly good.

1. New York

Pornographic cheeeeeeeeese!

New York-style pizza IS pizza. It's more "pizza" than pizza from Italy is pizza. And don't try to argue with me about how that's impossible because pizza "came" from Italy. Really? Because topped flat-bread-style foods similar to pizza have been made since the neolithic age. Does the specific toppings that pizza have on it make it uniquely Italian? Well, tomatoes came from South America, so try again.

ANYWAY, NY Pizza (as if it needs to be explained) is the famous large, hand-tossed, thin crust pizza that is accompanied with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and a bajillion other possible toppings. It's sold by the slice or by the whole pie. You can also fold it in half. If you can't fold it in half, then the crust is garbage and you should throw it away.

There are other pizza styles that you think I might be missing, like Hawaiian Pizza. Well, that's not ACTUALLY a pizza style. It's just New York pizza with ham and pineapple on it.