Posted on 02/23/2021 6:48:44 AM PST by mylife
As much as people try to wedge a definition for “Pittsburgh pizza,” the truth of it is that we don’t have a signature city style.
There are a handful of pizzerias that often come up in conversations about Pittsburgh pizza. However, with due respect to long-standing establishments such as Aiello’s, Mineo’s and Fiori’s, what they deliver is typical of the mid-century coast-to-coast boom of the American gas-oven pie, which has a slightly thicker crust and, often, a sweeter sauce than you’d find in the legacy New York City deck-oven pie-and-slice joints from which that style was derived.
What’s endearing about our region is how idiosyncratic pizza makers have over the past 75 years put their spin on what it means to make a pizza. There are sundry pizza styles within an hour’s drive of Pittsburgh, each with a story.
Our pizza foundations were built in the 1940s and continued to blossom through the 1970s, the four decades that represent the heyday of widespread commercial regionalization of pizza in the United States. (Prior to that, establishments that sold pizza were almost exclusively limited to what food writer Ed Levine calls “The Pizza Belt,” which was centered in New York City and New Haven, and tendriled as far as Boston and Philadelphia.)
The migration of regional Italian foodways — and how newly arrived immigrants strove to feed a lot of people on a budget — set the framework. The return of GIs stationed in Italy during World War II, many of whom (particularly those with roots in the country) were smitten with the pizza sold in bakeries, spurred the boom, as did mid-century innovations in technology, especially the gas-heated deck ovens popularized by Bakers Pride and Mastro.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghmagazine.com ...
Good stuff.
As you said everyone has their own subjective taste, but there isn’t a pizza joint ANYWHERE in this region that is recognized by anyone who wasn’t born and raised here as a “great” or blue ribbon pie.
Sorry, you may love it, and there are plenty of mom and pop shops here... unlike many other places... but none, none of them are worth making a trip to Pittsburgh to have.
There are pizza shops that are worth a trip to their home cities just to have.... There are no such places in Pittsburgh. Best you are going to find is some that are unique, but not remotely among the greats.
Ironically a lot of the pizzerias here in Jersey these days are owned by Egyptian Copts for some reason. Tend to avoid “by the slice” places and there are about six pizzerias in a 30 mile radius that I trust, all owned by Eye-ties (four from Italy itself). My sister has an outpost of the Grimaldi’s chain near her home in SC which is pretty good.
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That's your opinion, not a fact.
Is your wife's name karen?
You can't win an argument at home so you get on FR and state your lowly, unfounded OPINION, as fact.
Just admit that your string of words is based on your lowly, unproven, opinion, and call it a day.
Or not.
No it is not simply opinion.
There are zero pizza shops in this region who have ever gotten an honorable mention, let alone placed in any national or international pizza competition, ever.
That’s not opinion, that is a fact.
Facts are not opinion Terry
I grew up in Reading PA. A lot of Italians there who emigrated to work in coal mines and later the confectionery and candy business. In the late 50’s my Dad, who was a school teacher, moonlighted as a cabby at night. Around 11 pm was when he got off his shift and would bring home pizza from a bar called Marty’s. It was NY style Neapolitan, always with mushrooms. My Mom would wake us kids up so we could have a piece of fresh pie when he came home. Most other pizza in Reading was from sandwich shops, which always served thick square Sicilian pie by the piece. No toppings. Good pizza, good times.
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