GQ Magazine's 25 Best Pizzas In The U.S. 2009

(CHICAGO)
1. Great Lake
Mortadella pie

I phoned at 6:15 p.m., ordered a cheese pie, asked when I could pick it up. The reply: 8 p.m. When I arrived a few minutes early, two of the fourteen people seated in the tiny storefront shop were eating. The rest looked exasperated. Nick Lessins, the Polish-Czech co-owner and pizzamaker, seemed happily oblivious. I stood inside, watching for twenty-five minutes as he fashioned three pies, mine among them. No man is slower. He makes each as though it is his first, manipulating the dough until it appears flawless, putting on toppings one small bit after another. In the time he takes to create a pie, civilizations could rise and fall, not just crusts. His cheese pie, prepared with fresh mozzarella made in-house, grated Wisconsin sheep’s-and-cow’s-milk cheese, and aromatic fresh marjoram instead of basil, was slightly shy of unbelievable. The next day I returned to try the same pie topped with fresh garlic and mortadella, the dirigible-sized Italian sausage that looks like bologna, tastes like salami, and is usually cut into chunks. He sliced the meat very thin and laid slices of it over the pie the moment it came out of the oven. The mortadella, with its combination of burliness and creaminess, was a meaty addition to the earthy, bready crust. This pie—creative, original, and somewhat local—represents everything irresistible about the new American style of pizza-making.

(BROOKLYN)
2. Lucali
Plain pie

Lucali, around since 2006, is an old candy store done up to look like an old pizzeria, and there’s an eerie glow about it. I’m not getting spiritual. There really is. Owner and pizzamaker Mark Iacono stands behind a candlelit counter, wearing a white T shirt, looking mysterious and troubled, our first poster-boy pizzaiolo. It drives the women crazy, or at least the ones who went there with me. “He’s out of a romance novel,” one of them practically sobbed. (To me he looked like the character played by Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck, except with two hands.) Lucali takes no reservations, and standing in line is a necessity, although the staff is courteous and tries to alleviate the suffering by taking a cell-phone number and warning when your turn has arrived. More good news: Every pie that Iacono prepares is worth the wait. I picked the simplest of his creations, in essence a Margherita, although there’s no menu and none of the pies have names. When I asked what to call it, I was told “plain pie.” It has tomato, mozzarella, fresh basil, buffalo mozzarella, and a sprinkling of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, enormously satisfying for a pie so simple. The crust stands firm. The mozzarella melts exquisitely. The basil is wildly fresh. Should you need additional toppings, go for thinly shaved porcini mushrooms, so good I was tempted to put a second Lucali pie on my list.

SAN FRANCISCO)
3. Pizzeria Delfina
Panna pie
I sat at the cramped counter, watching a young woman standing in front of me crimp dough. She crimped and crimped, building in air holes with each purposeful squeeze of finger and thumb. Delfina has easily the best crust in San Francisco, an unusually successful fusion of Neapolitan and American styles. The pie placed before me looked slightly pale, but it had a yeasty aroma and a lovely sweetness. It was unlike any other I found, prepared with tomato sauce, heavy cream, basil, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and olive oil—and priced at a remarkable $10. Indeed, heavy cream does seem peculiar, but if you think about the Italian evolution of cheese for pizza—mozzarella becoming fresh mozzarella and then becoming fresh buffalo-milk mozzarella, each one richer and milkier than the one before—heavy cream is the natural expression of where Italians intend to go. The final addition, shavings of tangy, salty Parmigiano-Reggiano, is a brilliant step in the creation of an extraordinarily well-balanced pie.

(PHOENIX)
4. Pizzeria Bianco
Margherita with prosciutto

Before Chris Bianco, superhero, founded the artisan American-pizza industry, all was seemingly lost. The honored pizzerias with their ancient coal-fired ovens run by families that had arrived with Columbus were settling for pies with moribund crusts. Not that eating at Pizzeria Bianco, which accepts reservations only for jumbo parties, isn’t annoying. You get in line, although if you’re lucky you can grab one of the galvanized-metal chairs left out front. You become parched in the heat and ask the nice person behind you to save your spot while you walk over to Bar Bianco, next door, and buy a glass of faded Rioja from a bottle opened the previous day. You fear you’re not going to get in, because the place seats only about forty. Even if you’re pretty far up in line, as I was, you don’t know how many friends of the folks ahead of you will suddenly materialize and march in before you. (The answer: plenty.) On the other hand, waiting outside is like a big communal party, and had I not become chummy with one regular, I would never have ordered a Margherita pie topped with prosciutto. This fellow had three of them on his table, and he said it was all he ate. Chris Bianco’s fabled Margherita has a smoky and slightly scorched crust, too delicate to handle most toppings, but the uncommonly subtle, tender, and porky Italian prosciutto was a superlative option. Prosciutto is usually not one of my preferred toppings, because it’s often tough, but here it was icing on the crust.

(PROVIDENCE)
5. Bob & Timmy’s
Spinach-and-mushroom pizza

There’s no Bob or Timmy at Bob & Timmy’s. Last I heard, they’d sold to Rick and Jose, and I don’t think those two were there on the quiet weekday afternoon when I arrived with a guest. Our companions were a lonely waitress and a guy drinking at the bar. Bob & Timmy’s is a small tavern with beer bric-a-brac, captain’s chairs, reproduction Tiffany lamps, and a TV that remained on even though nobody was watching. Maybe in another era it was a bar for whalers, but there were no whalers around, either. I tried peering into the kitchen at the huge indoor charcoal grill, curious about grilled pizza, but the cook rushed to the door and chased me away. I’m pretty confident he was the cook, because I didn’t see anybody else back there. The menu is vast, but I stuck to simple variations, and every one was expertly prepared. The pies came in standard grilled-pizza format, irregularly round but cut into squares. The crust appeared too skinny to be interesting, but it seemed about the best flatbread I’d ever eaten. The vegetable toppings were remarkably fresh, and it occurred to me that freshness is something we rarely think about when contemplating what pizza we admire. The pie I loved most had three cheeses, the dominant one being feta, which adds tang and saltiness. Now I understand what every Greek must already know: Feta, spinach, and mushrooms are an astonishingly compatible combination.

(NEW HAVEN, CONN.)
6. Sally’s Apizza
White pie with potato
Sally’s is ancient, in an old Appalachian way. I can’t believe the men’s bathroom has been cleaned since 1938, when the pizzeria opened for business. Service was equally dismal. I noticed regulars getting some attention, not so much that they appeared pampered, but the rest of us waited about ninety minutes before our first pies appeared. To me, Sally’s should be renamed Sartre’s Apizza, home of absurdity and despair. I wasn’t there on any particular holiday, April Fools’ Day or Halloween, but the somnambulant staff wore weird outfits—nutsy party hats, outdated ties, Bermuda shorts, and T-shirts (in winter). I wondered if Sally’s was the headquarters of a work-release program for the culinarily insane. The customers weren’t impressive, either, especially the lady in the booth across from mine, fast asleep. Out of this agonizing ambience appeared a pie of incredible finesse, a tour de force, a white (no tomato sauce) pizza prepared with thinly sliced potatoes cooked to an artful golden brown, a scattering of equally faultless onions, and a masterful touch of rosemary, all perfectly complemented by Sally’s crust, a bit denser, chewier, and thinner than the one up the block at the equally fabled Pepe’s. By the way, I bet Sinatra got great service when he ate here.

(LOS ANGELES)
7. The Grandma
Tomato pie

The pizza is old New York. The mood is old L.A. Tomato Pie is a minuscule shop, entirely modern, hidden in the rear of an irregularly shaped strip mall not far from Hollywood. On a warm day, you might want to take advantage of Tomato Pie’s unique alfresco dining—orange fiberglass tables, blue fiberglass umbrellas, and an array of classic O’Keefe & Merritt kitchen stoves. Long ago, when Los Angeles was the oddball dining capital of America, casual restaurants specializing in such phantasmagorical settings were everywhere. On this day, a friend and I were seated indoors, in a tiny room entirely devoid of comforts, admiring crusts that I thought were the best in the city. Then I bit into a slice of the Grandma—a traditional and gorgeously assembled pizza with crushed tomatoes, fresh garlic, and a scattering of mozzarella, basil, oregano, and Pecorino Romano—I’m a sucker for Romano cheese. My friend and I simultaneously looked up and said, “This is great.” Indeed it was, the ingredients fresher than most, the crust unusually soft and tender, with a crisp bottom and a fluffy, nutty center. We shared a slice with a young mom named Katie, who insisted the pizza was better a few blocks away. Note to Katie: Your favorite pizza is no good.

(NEW YORK CITY)
8. Co.
Margherita

The Margherita here has buffalo-milk mozzarella, but the cheese is applied so expertly and melts so perfectly that the center of the pie doesn’t become a watery mess. All of us in New York who thought owner Jim Lahey knew only about bread now know otherwise. His Margherita, modest in size at a mere eleven inches in diameter, is so delicate that you will be inclined to finish the whole thing and immediately ask for another. A friend of mine, after eating two, said with awe, “I could do with another.” Lahey, revered owner of the beloved Sullivan Street Bakery, apparently had no difficulty becoming a master of crust—his is supple, thin, chewy, and charred, with very little outer ring. And yet, when I think about it, maybe tomato sauce is his strength. Co.’s seemed summery and fresh (although it turned out to be half fresh, half canned), and my jubilation was so apparent that a guy a few seats down looked at me and said disparagingly, “This sauce is no good. The tomatoes on pizza have to be canned.” He’s wrong, of course. I also had a complaint, but mine was sensible. I asked the waiter why the leafy basil had been blasted into a shriveled green blob, rather than being tossed on fresh immediately before serving, and was told that Lahey preferred cooked basil. In fact, customers can have it either way, so I recommend eating one of each.
(PHILADELPHIA)
9. Tacconelli’s
White pie

Sometimes there is no explanation for great pizza. Sometimes there are no great ingredients in great pizza, no specially sourced mozzarella, no hand-harvested garlic. I come from Philadelphia, and I had never heard of Tacconelli’s until recently, even though it was in business when I was growing up, going to school, and working there. What a wasted life. When I asked my waitress how it could have been that Tacconelli’s was unknown for so long, she said obscurity ended when yuppies discovered it, which was after I’d left town. (Finally, a reason to love yuppies.) Tacconelli’s does have a couple of quirks, the sort that I would have expected to bring early notoriety, but back then there were no bloggers to discover places like this. It has no prices on the menu, and when you call for a table you are asked to “reserve your dough” by letting them know how many pies you want. This insistence that you predict when you are going to be full before you start eating is one of the earliest known pizza affectations—it started in the ’80s. I suggest ordering too much, because every pizza here is wonderful, the crust from the huge, oil-burning oven an example of how tremendously satisfying an amalgam of thin, chewy, and crunchy can be. I loved the white pie, so much better than the sum of its packaged parts: ordinary part-skim mozzarella, granulated garlic, salt and pepper. In essence, it’s the ultimate expression of cheese on bread. A note on decor: The hydrangeas, roses, and African violets in the window are artificial. Of course.

(BROOKLYN)
10. Totonno’s
Margherita with pepperoni
The fire reportedly started from coals that had been removed from the pizza oven and stored overnight in a firebox. Damage was extensive. If this turns out to be an epitaph for the great Totonno’s in Coney Island, in business for eighty-five years until that fire closed it this past March, I hope it’s a worthy one. In my opinion, Totonno’s is—or possibly was—the template for the new style of pizzerias opening around the country, the ones where the owners prepare pies with deliberation, calculation, and stunning pride. The staff is slow-moving. If you are privileged to go there, you’ll almost certainly have to wait in a line. If it stretches out the door, you’ll have an opportunity to look over the neighborhood, mostly car-repair shops that park vehicles awaiting work on the sidewalks. The pies come in gorgeous hues, an artist’s palette of reds, blacks, and golds. The crusts are supple but crunchy. A friend who ate there with me a month before the fire said, “I know very good crust from the sound of it. As the roller cut through it, I heard the crispness.” The pies tend to be mild and understated, so the best option here is pepperoni, which adds heat and spiciness, and a good dose of dried oregano from one of the shakers scattered about the room. If you love old-style pepperoni pizza as much as I do, you’ll be looking forward to the day when Totonno’s returns.

(PORT CHESTER, NY)
11. Tarry Lodge
Clam pie

The clam pie, legendary in New Haven, is an oddity that seldom succeeds, since clams taken out of their shells and cooked atop a pizza invariably turn into rubbery bits. At Tarry Lodge, an Italian restaurant run by Mario Batali, something profoundly simple and fundamentally correct is done: The clams remain in their shells. On my visit they were Manila clams, delicate and sweet, briny and fresh, tiny beauties accented by the garlic, oregano, red pepper, and Parmigiano-Reggiano atop a thin, nicely charred crust. You have to work to remove the clams from their shells, but compared with everything else required to access great pizza these days, that isn’t much effort.

(NEW HAVEN, CONN.)
12. Frank Pepe
The Original Tomato Pie

I love the crust here—rather thick, quite soft, with nooks, crannies, colors, and char. I felt the same about the tomato sauce, not exactly what you would expect on pizza, a little more like a mild, chunky cooked pasta sauce. As I chewed and ate, ate and chewed, going through seven pies, trying one topping after another, it came to me: Keep it simple. The small, plain tomato pie without mozzarella and stunningly priced at $6.10 is pretty perfect when topped with plenty of silky, salty Pecorino Romano from the shaker on your table. The cheese is freshly grated each day. The single flaw in this pie? After adding so much cheese to so much sauce, you might have to use a knife and fork.

(HARRISON TOWSHIP, MICH.)
13. Luigi’s “the Original”
Gourmet veggie pizza
My nearly endless and seemingly futile quest to find a wonderful vegetable—not merely vegetarian—pizza somehow led me to Luigi’s, which looks like a roadhouse but is apparently a greenhouse. Topping a pie with broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, and onions, as is done here, seems to promise a chaotic chorus of sad, shriveled, sacrificial plant life, and that isn’t the end of the potential problems. The crust contained sesame seeds, and the grated cheese was Asiago. The combination succeeded magnificently. The seeds contributed nuttiness and the cheese pungency to an array of vegetables that tasted remarkably fresh, to say nothing of cooked to order. The secret, according to the waitress: Toss everything on the pie, cook. That’s it.

(SAN FRANCISCO)
14. Gialina
Wild-nettle pie

My friend said the wild nettles reminded her of newly mown artichokes, a lovely if implausible image. I found them a little like broccoli, but fear not: They’re better than that. These were bright forest green as well as earthy, and they came with a spectacular supporting cast of pancetta (unsmoked bacon), sliced portobello mushrooms, and provolone cheese. The pie, prepared without tomatoes or mozzarella in a standard commercial pizza oven, nevertheless lacked for nothing. The crust, cooked longer than most, was bubbly, luscious, and buttery, a little like warm Italian bread. Still, it was the wild nettles that did it, perhaps the best vegetation—okay, second to broccoli rabe—to put on pizza.

(DETROIT)
15. Buddy’s
Cheese pizza

Buddy’s pizza crust is one of the best in America, although it’s unlikely you knew it was in the running for the championship. That’s because Buddy’s, as much a bar and sandwich shop as it is a pizzeria, specializes in Detroit-style square pizza, almost unknown outside the city. The crusts here are a little better than the competition’s, and almost every pizzeria I tried in Detroit did them well. The interior slices on a Buddy’s pizza are light, slightly crunchy, and extremely satisfying, but the goal in any Detroit experience is those slices at the four corners of the pan, where maximum blackening occurs. If you love the burnt ends on pork ribs, Buddy’s isn’t to be missed.

(MARINA DEL REY, CA)
16. Antica Pizzeria
Pizza del cafone

Antica is one of those pizzerias that endeavor to create a classic Neapolitan experience, not easy when you’re located on the second floor of a Los Angeles mall. A multitude of Italian products, from cookies to olive oils, augments the set design, but the best touch is a pile of fifty-five-pound sacks of genuine “00” pizza flour from Naples, the secret to supple crusts. The ones here were entirely successful—light, puffy, and charred. Pizza labeled del cafone—fool’s or peasant’s pizza—isn’t uncommon, and it doesn’t always have precisely the same ingredients, but the combination here was brilliant. Uniting crumbled sausage, broccoli rabe, and smoked mozzarella seems mighty sophisticated to me.

(SAN FRANCISCO)
17. A16
Romana pie
The crust is Neapolitan-style, well prepared, which means soft, soothing, and a little spongy, with pleasing burned spots. The sauce contains anchovies, which I absolutely can’t abide whole, although I appreciate them as well as the next open-minded fellow when they’re chopped up as a flavor element. That’s what’s done here, as it is so often in Southern Italy. I had another fright: Plopped on top of the pie were whole olives, but in this case French Niçoise olives, which are not aggressive enough to scare me away. In Naples such a pie is known as pizza romana, whereas in Rome it’s a pizza napoletana. Before I’d tried A16’s spicy, bold, exuberant version, I would have guessed that each city wanted to blame this pie on somebody else.

(PROVIDENCE)
18. Al Forno
Grilled pizza with roasted eggplant

Al Forno’s grilled pizzas are more than legends; they’re beauties. Our roasted-eggplant pie consisted of creatively arranged toppings on a flat and irregularly shaped crust, perhaps unintentionally resembling an artist’s palette. The pie was assembled with two cheeses, mild and creamy Bel Paese plus sharp and salty Pecorino Romano; dabs of impossibly delicious tomato sauce intensely flavored with eggplant; flecks of parsley for color; and shreds of mild, bright scallions that added a feathery texture. Al Forno was one of the first no-reservation restaurants in America’s modern era of dining. It set the standard not simply for grilled pizza but also for impossibly long waits.

(BOSTON)
19. Galleria Umberto
Square slice

The line fools you. After a half hour, you’re near the counter, a mere five or six customers ahead of you. The next pan, you think. Doesn’t happen, because nobody settles for one slice. Everybody wants six, maybe eight, to go. Galleria Umberto is as big as a cafeteria, rarely crowded but always with a line. The slices are Sicilian, which means squares, thick ones, airier and lighter than most, with a subtle crunch, a splash of tomato sauce, a scattering of cheese. It represents what Boston’s North End once was: bedrock Italian, absolutely old-world. When you get close, you’re sure it’s almost your turn, but an old lady who looks like she’s off the boat from Bari steps in front of you, and you let her, because she was here first and sat down to rest her feet. Strange thoughts come to those in line. Is it possible this place has only one pan?

(NEW YORK CITY)
20. Famous Joe’s
Slice

Once, this slice defined New York City. That was before pizza slices were supersized, became entire meals laden with wacky toppings and extra cheese. Joe’s crust, thin and flexible but not too soft, is perfect for street pizza. Atop it is not much cheese and not much sauce, merely enough, in ideal symmetry. You can ask for a topping, but then everybody in the tiny, cramped shop will know you’re from out of town. The crust has a few lovely burned spots, but the New York slice isn’t about the search for the perfect crust or the perfect sauce. It’s the perfect New York experience. A friend who came with me said, sadly, “In my youth, stores like this ruled the earth. Now they’re almost extinct.” You do know how to fold a slice like this, don’t you? No? I guess you are from out of town.

(FARMINGTON HILLS, MICH.)
21. Tomatoes Apizza
Pepperoni pie
Here you’ll find a coal-fired oven big enough to barbecue a cow, and here I found the purest expression of pepperoni pizza as I love it. Forgive me if you prefer your pepperoni thick (I don’t) or soft (I don’t) or covered by cheese and sauce—as is traditional in Detroit, but thankfully not at Tomatoes Apizza. The non-Sicilian crust was soft, slightly charred, and entirely appealing, the tomato sauce and cheese more than satisfactory. All was swell, but the precise pepperoni preparation was most appealing. There was lots of it, sliced thin, sprinkled with Parmigiano-Reggiano, and allowed to curl and crisp up in the oven. My compliments to Danielle, our waitress, who took the order, put down her pad, and under an emergency staffing shortage prepared our pepperoni pie exactly right.

(PHILADELPHIA)
22. Osteria
Zucca pie

Zucca means “squash.” Yes, I know. Nobody sitting around the house suddenly says to the wife and kids, “Hey, let’s go out for a squash pizza.” I’m telling you, it’s terrific. The crust is thin and crispy, not ordinarily my preference, but the sweetness of this pizza is great when matched with crunchiness and char. Oh, I didn’t say it was sweet, did I? Don’t worry. There’s a little sweetness, not too much. It comes from the golden raisins and the toasted pine nuts, not from the puree or cubes of squash. There’s cheese, too, mozzarella. That helps, right? I’m telling you that this is a stylish, intense, dramatic, and absolutely special pizza, and you’ll love it. I didn’t believe I would, but I did.

(BOSTON)
23. Santarpio’s
Homemade-sausage pie

Talk about old-world. As we walk in, the guy up front yells, “Tony, table for two.” Cases of beer are stacked in the back, next to the jukebox and a bank of gumball machines. The gas-fired oven operates like no other I’ve seen—it has rotating shelves that look like the ones in diners that display cream pies. The kid busing tables has to be playing hooky, and I expect a truant officer to walk in, blow his whistle, and start chasing him around the room. All the pies are exactly right, but the one with sausage is better than that. Santarpio’s crusts are hearty, a little roughhouse, very much in the baked-bread family, and the homemade sausage comes crumbled, skillfully integrated into the tomato sauce. I know for certain that the owners are proud of that sauce: On the steps outside, where you might find stone lions guarding the entrance to a library, stand two industrial-size Pastene tomato cans.

(DETROIT)
24. Niki’s
Cheese pizza with feta
I searched for the meaning of Greek pizza, a topic often discussed, undoubtedly because so many Greeks own pizzerias. I never found it, but the quest was worthwhile, because at Niki’s I discovered feta cheese as a topping. Niki’s doesn’t have Greek pizza. It has Detroit pizza, and one optional topping is feta cheese, which adds creaminess and tanginess while brightening up (and somewhat dominating) any pie. The feta here is crumbled, tossed atop the pizza, and baked. It becomes toasty and crispy, giving any pizza from plain to pepperoni a singular zip. Now that I’ve made this important discovery, my next goal is searching for the meaning of bouzouki music, finding out whether a man can go mad endlessly listening to it in Greek pizzerias.

(NEW YORK CITY)
25. Una Pizza Napoletana
Margherita

This is the most beautiful pizza in America, the outer ring grand and pillowy, the San Marzano tomatoes bright, the buffalo mozzarella dazzlingly melted. Neapolitan pizzas are undeniably gorgeous, and Una Pizza Napoletana replicates their style and attractiveness better than any other pizzeria in this country. This Margherita, an expression of purity and restraint, could be immortalized in a painting entitled Still Life in Pizza. Many admirers consider this the best pizza in America. I don’t go that far, but I believe it’s more enjoyable than almost any pizza in Naples—maybe in all of Italy.

Is clam pie pizza?

(BOSTON)
23. Santarpio’s
Homemade-sausage pie

This is in my hood! It's pretty great but they do some weird thing with cornmeal so the crust is weirdly crunchy. That's the only part I don't like about it.

no accounting for taste imo

in searching for the twenty-five best pizzas in America, I traveled to ten American cities, the ones I knew had a lot of pizzerias or a lot of Italians. They seem to go together, although less so anymore. I visited 109 pizzerias and ate 386 pies, although almost never the whole thing. (Remember, I couldn’t finish a single slice of the stuffed.) I know what you’re thinking: You didn’t visit my favorite pizzeria. You missed the best.

important to note that it's only a survey of ten cities.

just ate at co. last week by the way -- i think it really is an exceptional pizza, tho a little $$.

the problem is it seems sort of silly & unfair to compare sit-down restaurant 'gourmet' pizza (like co.) with single-slice takeout places.

Oh damn, Grimaldi's DENIED.

Is "Famous Joe's" the Joe's in the West Village by that little triangle park off 6th Ave? That place is good -- it's not the best pizza I ever had but their slices always make you want another one.

Does the Detroit area have some pizza renown I'm unaware of?

wait, I guess the obvious answer to that question is "yes"

No one I have spoken to here in Chicago has even heard of the No. 1 pizza place.

This article is serious pizza challops action.

can't rank a pizza without breaking some challops

LJ vindicated by some of the entries here.

Santarpio's out by the airport? That is indeed about as good as it gets.

Can vouch for Delfina and Antica but any list with a Chicago pizza at the top and V&T's absent is suspect imo

Well technically there is a Chicago pizza at the top, just not a traditional Chicago pizza. In the article proper, dude totally trashes Chicago deep dish and stuffed pizzas, as well as traditional Italian pizza.

Pizza people are always against those Chicago varietals, presumably because they expect them to function like pizza, and they do not

n/a, I think that top place is out in the suburbs -- if it's the place I'm thinking of, then I remember Bourdain going there for his Chicago show and briefly getting over being against Chicago pizzas

It's in Andersonville.

and it's not "Chicago pizza"

There are pics in the magazine article and it's a very thin pizza.

Great Lake is real good. expensive with weird hours though

by "getting over being against Chicago pizzas" I mean "getting over being against the entire idea of any pizza being made in Chicago that is not totally normal"

maybe thinking of a different place with the Bourdain, then -- I dunno

oh, yes, sorry, that was Burt's Place

any self-styled 'pizza expert' who trashes traditional Italian pizza = a pillock, imo

the article is about American pizza

it's about "pizza in the us" rather than "american pizza"

thank you gabbneb junior

I visited 109 pizzerias and ate 386 pies

is this the most self-indulgent assignment an editor has ever given himself?

i am going on a pizza tour this summer, i will visit 5 pizzerias and eat 386 pies.

I will eat only pizza for one year and write a book about my experiences.

Why does the number one Chicago pizza place have to be exasperating? Whose idea was that?

Alan Richman's creditors.

"it's about "pizza in the us" rather than "american pizza"

i think the header is actually the greatest 25 pizzas on EARTH. they just all, um, happen to be in the u.s.

yeah that seems fair though

i think the header is actually the greatest 25 pizzas on EARTH. they just all, um, happen to be in the u.s.

exactly. greatest pizzas on EARTH=America pizza

All of the pizza places on this list sound fairly exasperating; half the text is dedicated to how much time you have to expend getting to these places and waiting for a table and then waiting on your pizza. Dude's got a total masochistic fetish for terrible service.

greatest pizzas on EARTH=America pizza

― Mr. Que, Friday, May 22, 2009 10:47 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is seriously one of main thesis points of the article itself.

probably a yelper

we're lucky to live in such a great country. and yeah reading through these made me want pizza, but not to go to any of these places. actually it makes me want to MAKE my own pizza

All of the pizza places on this list sound fairly exasperating; half the text is dedicated to how much time you have to expend getting to these places and waiting for a table and then waiting on your pizza. Dude's got a total masochistic fetish for terrible service.

― congratulations (n/a), Friday, May 22, 2009 3:48 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

Bingo. I don't have time for poor service. I don't care how good the food is, because invariably it ends up leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

no real hook to "GQ Magazine's 25 Pizza Places With The Best Service In The U.S. 2009", though

yeah, i hate that folksy meanness that some foodie types equate with "realness" or whatever. fuck that, it's the 21st century, send grandma home and hire a real waitress.

There's a difference between bad service and having to wait. I don't mind a bit of a wait for good food, if there's a good vantage point for people watching.

uck that, it's the 21st century, send grandma home and hire a real waitress.

hahaha, "in every Vietnamese restaurant ever"

"It has no prices on the menu, and when you call for a table you are asked to “reserve your dough” by letting them know how many pies you want."

this is why i never went to tacconelli's when i lived in philly.

i don't mind waiting if the place is busy. it's understandable. but some of the places he describes just sound "quirky" no matter how busy it is.

Pizza really brings out some strong opinions in people, huh? Pizza thread = guaranteed to be popular.

In San Francisco I like Pizzetta 211 better than I like either of the two on that list that I've been too.

The only one of these I've been to, I think, is Lucali, and it was awesome.

Not better than what I've had in Rome, though.

Yeah, maybe, their sausage is godlike.

My parents were in the restaurant business so I pretty much grew up inside a restaurant/working in one until I left home. Because of this I am split on the service issue. On one hand I don't think there's any excuse for bad service or bad attitudes. On the other hand, I know how shitty being a server can be and tend to be empathetic and assume people are just having a bad day.

yeah you have to give benefit of the doubt, and if you are extra-nice to your server there's like a 98% chance they'll appreciate it and be cool.

i go out to eat too much and can't remember the last time i had bad service (i.e. service where i tipped below my standard).

Yeah, the way some people talk about all of their horrible service experiences makes me feel like I'm either really tolerant or really lucky.

― Bianca Jagger (jaymc)

yeah i think in my entire life i've had one, perhaps two experiences where i remember service that was really horrible. and by horrible i don't mean slow or absent-minded, because that's totally okay with me. i'm talking about rudeness. i think it happened once at taco bell when i changed my order and the dude at the window said (in a real dbaggy manner), "next time don't change your order," so i gave him back the food and asked for my money back. the other time i can't remember but it definitely occurred. people who often have bad service experiences often have issues imo.

Right, I mean, there are people who are clueless, ask a million questions, change their order fifty times with elaborate substitions, make bizarre demands, and block the server's path with their gigantic double-sized designer baby stroller. Those people are bound to have service problems.

But I just have to reiterate that it's all about this (with the possible exception of the grandma comment, it's usually grandpa that acts like a jerk, having just cooked pizza for fifty years in a world where it is now usually done for a laugh by high school students who need money for pot):

yeah, i hate that folksy meanness that some foodie types equate with "realness" or whatever. fuck that, it's the 21st century, send grandma home and hire a real waitress.

― scott seward, Friday, May 22, 2009 4:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

anybody else in Beantown think Regina is better than Santarpio's?

xp omar - I can only remember one really bad service experience, too ... but I like deep dish pizza.

i have guilt from never working in a restaurant, so i pretty much always give the benefit of the doubt or else i feel like a dick. except for that shitty diner in metairie, la that took an hour and a half to serve us shitty pancakes, and this was at 3 am when hardly anyone was there.

anybody else in Beantown think Regina is better than Santarpio's?

― henry s, Friday, May 22, 2009 2:20 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yes.

never been to santarpio's by regina is fuckin' a imo. has anyone ever been to the place in the north end on the gq list?

*by = but

lovin' the Detroit pizza love, that greek stuff is the best

No NJ, no credibility.

Yeah yeah yeah I mean, I have a rich vocational history in food service and volunteer with an org dedicated to supporting restaurant workers and I am not talking about grumpy/hungover/weeded servers here. I am talking incorporating shit service/snotty attitude into your freaking business plan out of sheer hubris.

That said, if somebody wanted to go pick up one of them mortadella pizzas from Great Lake and bring it to me at my desk, I would be totally excited about it and pay you back because it sounds really good. Also I've never had mortadella and I would like to try it.

I was trying to think what Chicago pizzerias I would want to see on this list -- if you're going to exclude deep-dish and stuffed altogether, then I'm really not sure what I would include. I'm not terribly impressed with the thin Neapolitan trend at places like Spacca di Napoli, La Madia, Pizza D.O.C., and Coal Fire (N.B. I haven't actually eaten at the latter). I like Crust, but more for their inventiveness, which doesn't always quite work. My favorite might actually be Piece, which is New Haven-style.

Have you--or anyone else--tried Art of Pizza?

nabisco right on stuffed/deep dish haters getting caught up on it being called a pizza and judging it on those terms rather than just appreciating it for the awesomeness that it is.

Art of Pizza is tops

Still haven't been there, despite living here for 9 years! Although I've heard nothing but good things. A friend of mine once threw a party in which he ordered deep-dish pizzas from like a dozen different Chicago restaurants and had his guests rate them all. Art of Pizza won.

That reminds me, though, you know what was surprisingly good? Pizza Art Cafe, this weird Bosnian-run place up in Ravenswood Manor.

I just e-mailed my friend about the GQ list (the one who had tried to eat at Great Lake to no avail) and she said...

Yeah, I saw. Kinda makes me want to give them a 4th chance, but "we're not a pizza shop, we're a food store" keeps ringing in my ears and changing their hours on us each time we tried to go back leaves a bad taste in my mouth, no matter how good they are. I'll probably give in though, but I wonder what this is going to do to their 2 or 3 pizza at a time baking schedule.

Base has got to be as thin and rustic as reasonably possible, slightly charred from a wood-fired oven. I'd sooner have a kebab, or a short vom rather than some horrendous deep dish cheese-fest.

this guy might be full of shit, but srsly, how is this not the best career in the universe

nabisco right on stuffed/deep dish haters getting caught up on it being called a pizza and judging it on those terms rather than just appreciating it for the awesomeness that it is

I'm happy to appreciate it for the awesomeness it is; what's annoying is when that non-pizza awesomeness is brought into considerations of e.g. "best pizza"

My personal favorites are Pizza Luce (Minneapolis/Duluth) and Coalfire (Chicago).

Woah, I had no clue at all that Great Lake is in my neighborhood. When I read GQ in the tub earlier this week, I thought--I gotta get there before this poll catches on.

so, I find out in 2 days that one way from Vic's sister's house in Mamaroneck, there is a fantastic hot dog place and that the other way in Port Chester there's a Batali place that does great pizza.......2 months after they move back to the UK, 6 months after we last went to see them....dammit.

The quest for a perfect pizza is like the quest for the perfectly knotted cravat or the most perfectly breed-conforming springer spaniel or the transcendent corn plaster. I do not understand these things. I truly do not.

Pizzaiolo in Oakland is better than Delfina, IMO.

east bay pizza in general > sf pizza

Yeah, Cheeseboard surely crushes all the SF choices (and has quirky lack of menu besides!)

No NJ, no credibility.

Indeed, DeLorenzo's is glaringly absent (and could have been counted as Philadelpha, if they're counting Port Chester as New York.)

Mmm DeLorenzo's... If I had to pick 10 cities to visit for pizza, I'd choose Trenton long before Philly.

i agree. as an ex-philly dude, i can't tell you how many times i was bummed out by the pizza at various places. there WERE some good spots though. but they were few and far between.

Pizzaiolo in Oakland is better than Delfina, IMO.

― akm, Friday, May 22, 2009 5:12 PM (3 hours ago)

REAL TALK

one of the best meals of my life

How did Patsy's in NYC not make this list? I always thought it was generally regarded to be one of the absolute best.Why, this guy spent SIX YEARS trying to get the recipe.

there's a place in New Haven that's probably better than Pepe's (and maybe Sally's - controversial)

i'm not surprised by the omission of a couple old NY places - Patsy's, Grimaldi's, etc. i would think that people would complain more about the omission of Di Fara, but maybe that's just cuz they do slices.

what place in new haven are you referring to? Modern? Bar? I would say Pepe's is by far the best, but what do I know

BAR

I like the (overcharred) crust at Pepe's and the sauce is good too, but I prefer the sauce (and maybe also the superthin crust) at BAR, which also has better additional ingredients

i don't think cheeseboard crushes any of these, but then I eat it like three times a week and have gotten immune to it, maybe. it oddly always tastes the same to me, regardless of what the toppings are. it's good but it's kind of boring.

http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm
^^^^^ have read this guy's site before, and understand so little of it that i just have to accept i am only a very minor/part-time pizza maker. ;(((((

I like the pizza where the dough is so thin that you can fold it up and eat it like a taco.

Sounds more like you like tacos.

My wife at the one in Phoenix the other night. She said it was really good, but her mom and sister went by the restaurant at about 8 to put their names in before picking up my wife at the airport, then they drove back to the restaurant and still ended up waiting until like 12:30 to get seated.

This might have been mentioned somewhere upthread, but this list was the best pizzas, not the best pizza places, which may explain the absence of some heavy hitters and the inclusion of some surprise choices. I mean, in terms of ingredients, it's hard to go wrong in Chicago with Spacca Napoli, Crust, Coalfire or especially the great Burt's. But if this dude had a special pie that made him happy somewhere else, good for him. I've still never heard of the place he at at, though. At least, not until this list started making the rounds. The reliable LTHForum crew seems to like it: http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=24684&p=260938

here's his list of top 10 pizza cities

http://men.style.com/gq/blogs/alanrichman/2009/05/the-top-ten-cities-not-pizzas.html

i suppose it wouldn't be inaccurate to call Bar rude, but 'the rudest pizzeria in America.' really? it's a sometimes-high-volume bar staffed by kinda indifferent, i guess a little brusque and maybe sometimes a little snotty, twentysomething mostly girls that happens to serve really great pizza. but i don't think the attitude is much different from other places in New Haven, only the personnel.

i like his NYC burger list - http://men.style.com/gq/blogs/alanrichman/2008/07/my-five-favorit.html

http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/03/alan-richman-is-pissed-at-bourdain-les-halles-review.html

two point RE: burger:

1) The Luger burger isn't THAT good...

2) Isn't there a quote somewhere where a chef of some repute says [literally], 'there's no such thing as medium-rare'?

Also, Nicky's is a caricature of a burger joint.

Wait, just realized this was not written by Alan Rickman and the thing's kind of ruined for me.