Pizza Styles Across the USA

From coast-to-coast, certain geographic locations within the USA are fiercely proud of their style of pizza. When it comes to crust and sauce and cheese and everything in-between, our taste in pie is as varied as our cultural heritage. Indeed, in some parts of the country, the style of Italian dish is based on the immigrants and settlers that started the tradition. Whether you prefer New York's thin crust or Chicago's deep dish, there is a flavor for every palate, and an argument behind every local defending their regional pie.

Other types of regional pizzas include Neapolitan and Sicilian, named for their respective geographic regions in the home country of Italy. New Haven has its own style, as does California, Trenton, Detroit, Chicago, the Midwest, Ohio Valley, New England, DC, and St. Louis. There are also subclasses of pie including grandma-style, grilled, bar-style, deep dish, stuffed, thin, and parlor-style. Do you know the different regions and what makes each type unique?

The two most common types of pizza are thin crust, made famous in New York, and deep dish, made popular in Chicago. Native New Yorkers and Chicagoans will argue until they are blue in the face about which type of pie tastes better and which is more authentic to the true Italian heritage. The best you can do is get the two sides to agree to disagree.

Neapolitan is a thin-style crust with a puffy edge and very few ingredients. Stuffed pie is another Chicago specialty and looks very similar to the deep dish associated with the region. However, the top layer is made of crust and it usually has a much more dense filling of toppings. Grandma-style Nonna pie is a combination of the Sicilian version with a thin crust. Grilled, naturally refers to the form of baking, and in this case is done over an extremely hot BBQ grill. Toppings must be pre-cooked because the crust cooks quickly and it doesn't have the typical convection cooking of an oven.

To contrast, pizza parlor-style is more of a traditional style than a particular geographic version of the Italian favorite. This type of pie refers to a multi-generational tradition of making pie a certain way and keeping it that way over the years. These pies taste great and don't change.

So, whatever your taste in pizza may be, it's easy to see you could find something you might like across the country. You just might have to take a little road trip to get there.