Enhance your pizza IQ

Forget about the tired pickup line of “What’s your sign?” – I posit that you gain a lot more insight into what someone is all about by asking them about their favorite pizza. You learn whether or not they are into food (if they mention frozen pizza, it’s time to move along), possibly about how well-traveled they are (if they mention different cities or even countries where they’ve eaten pizza), whether they like to cook (if they bring up their backyard Ooni), and so on. Plus, who doesn’t like to talk about pizza?

Today’s post features articles on either end of the pizza spectrum: the most popular and the most obscure American pizza styles. For the former, we go to Food & Wine, which published a guide last year describing the five essential American pizza styles, which range from the famed New York slice to the lush Chicago deep dish to the difficult-to-define California pie. Food & Wine throws in a controversial choice, the New Haven style, since that doesn’t seem like it should make the top five, but the article provides an excellent synopsis of the various types. Of these five, I am torn between the NY style and the Detroit style (shhh, don’t tell Jenny, I am sure she is NY slice all the way).

After digesting the five most common styles, pop over to Gastro Obscura, which investigates the most unusual types of pizza you will encounter in the states. Up first is the Ohio Valley style pie, which incorporates cold pepperoni and cold cheese that ostensibly get warmed by the hot crust and sauce on the drive home. I traveled extensively in the Ohio River valley from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati when I lived in West Virginia and I never encountered this type of pizza, so I would agree that it’s fairly obscure.

The Gastro Obscura article also chronicles Colorado-style pizza, alleged to put Chicago-style to shame for its decadence, the funky Altoona-style (you need to see the photo to appreciate its weirdness), and something called pizza strips, a Rhode Island specialty. Being the pizza lover that I am, I would try all of them, probably at least twice just to be sure.