Pie Fight
Who Makes the Best Pizza - New York or Chicago?

Article by: Alexandra Collier, January 2007

Having risen from its humble origins, these days pizza is a battleground for piazzolo (pizza chef) patriots who sprinkle everything from truffle oil to salsa chips over the pimple-faced pie. No two cities have fallen deeper in love with the pizza than Chicago and New York - and, as in every fight for the affections of the perfect lover, the competition is cut-throat between New York's sumptuous 'slice' and Chicago's 'deep dish' delight. So who makes the best piece of pie?

Founding Fathers

Gennaro Lombardi opened the first official US pizzeria at 53 1/2 Spring St in New York in 1905. Lombardi - part of the wave of Neapolitan immigrants who settled on the East coast - imported Naples-style pizza (a thin, casalinga/homestyle crust topped simply with basic ingredients such as tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella) to the Big Apple. Italian workers would stop by Lombardi's and buy whatever they could afford - at five cents a pie the whole pizza was often too steep. They would receive a proportionately sized slice in a paper bag tied with string: better than Mum's packed lunch any day. Lombardi's (tel: 212 941 7994; cnr Spring & Mott Sts) closed in 1984, but it reopened ten years later a block down from its original location and is now a dine-in/delivery style pizzeria with queues that can stretch around the block - no more dropping cents for a slice.

When a Chicagoan and New Yorker talk pizza, fisticuffs loom when the conversation turns to crusts.

Legend has it that in the late 1800s a Chicago street pedlar, balancing a metal tub filled with baked tomato pies on his head, would hock pieces at two cents a portion in Little Italy. The first pizzeria - Pizza Uno - was opened in 1943 by Ike Sewell, an American soldier who had been stationed in Italy during WWII. Sewell ingeniously capitalised on the returning troops' appreciation for the dish they had devoured abroad. Uno's pioneered the Deep Dish style of pizza. Various ingredients (eg sausages and tomatoes) are piled inside a hearty apple pie-sized base. Unlike New Yorkers, Chicagoans pig out on the whole pie, which they eat in a restaurant or get home delivered. Typical of the Windy City's big business brass, Pizza Uno has expanded into an empire of restaurants known as Uno Chicago Grill (tel: 312 321 1000; 29 East Ohio), with franchises across the world.

Crust Lust

When a Chicagoan and New Yorker talk pizza, fisticuffs loom when the conversation turns to crusts. New York - true to the elongated narrow shape of Manhattan - is all about a thin, crunchy crust that provides a flat, almost rimless plate of pastry on which to layer the ingredients. A thin crust, coal- or wood-charred to perfection, should be singed slightly on the bottom, and have a crunchy texture and smoky flavour. The only way to eat a slice, as New York local Derek Miller puts it, is to fold the crust in half like a paper plane and let 'the grease squeeze out the back while you're eating it from the bottom.' Chicago, a city where size matters - after all, it's the home of the first skyscraper - is big on base; the lip of the buttery crust is inches high above the dense mass of mutz (mozzarella). Unlike the slice, which can be the manhandled, Chicago pizza often requires a knife and fork to cut through the dense, gooey (but not too gooey, if it's cooked just right) goodness.

No two cities have fallen deeper in love with the pizza than Chicago and New York.

The Verdict

'I just think it's more refined. More effort goes into making it,' says Chicago local Michael Rau, waxing lyrical about the joys of the deep dish. New Yorkers, meanwhile, scoff at such ideas, believing that the mountains of dough and filling are excessive (an emphatic 'bleeeugh,' was the response of Davina Cohen, an avid New York pizza eater, to deep-dish doughiness.) In the end - fat or thin, crispy or squidgy, meaty or cheesy - the distinctions are irrelevant. As Rau put it: 'It's a tribal thing. It's considered defecting to join another tribe.' Let's face it: as long as it will love you at 4am, it's amore.

Want to weigh into the pie fight? Go to the Thorn Tree and have your say. What makes a pizza great? You be the judge.