Is it impossible to find good pizza in Pittsburgh?
If only someone in Pittsburgh dedicated the last twelve years to solving such a problem...
Hi pizza pals! What a week for pizza. There’s non-stop chatter in the Pittsburgh community around what to find the best pizza. But, we are so busy ranking and re-ranking the same pizzas every fiscal quarter are we forgetting to explore the world of pizza? Are we so caught up in defending our childhood pizza shop that we don’t have the energy to venture out our front door, leap beyond the precipice of nostalgia and experience pizza from the next neighborhood over?
Let’s talk about that.
People in Pittsburgh Can’t Find Good Pizza
I’m preaching to the choir here, but we know Pittsburgh has a tremendous pizza scene. I’d go as far to say that Pittsburgh has the best pizza per capita! Is that ludicrous of me to shout from the top of Mount Washington? Yes, perhaps it is.
But then why did a tweet from @FritesFlagey go regionally viral?
Then, Ryan Deto, a local journalist, discoverer of Altoona Hotel Pizza and transplant from the Bay Area replied with this.
The thread is madness and I won't relitigate its content here. As you can imagine it’s full of “helpful” replies like:
Have you tried Fiori’s?
Have you tried Mineo’s?
Have you tried Caliente? They won best pizza once.
Very good, very helpful. The internet continues to pay dividends for humanity.
But this is a common refrain, a chorus I hear repeated in the pizza discourse a few times a year. And yes, I do take it personally. How could I not? I’m the person that bills themselves as the local pizza journalist. Every time this question comes up it’s proof that I’m not doing a great enough job of getting the word out on all this amazing pizza.
Anyways, let’s talk about some of the issues.
Nostalgia Taints our Tastebuds
Nostalgia warps the senses and distorts your flavor palette. You’re relying on ancient memories to recall what a pizza tasted like or felt like. It turns the innocent pizza, oozing with cheese, into a metaphor for your childhood. The greatest time of your life is baked into that pizza and there’s no separating the two.
So what happens is you have Pittsburgh pizza enthusiasts banging the drum of ancient institutions like Mineo’s and Aiello’s (Luciano’s or Monte Cello’s in my case) and when a transplant or pizza curious asks for recommendations they don't get a recommendation. They get your childhood and memories shoveled onto their plate. When you bite into the pizza you taste: warm fuzzy memories of birthday parties, skipping school to eat pizza, family dinners, first dates and breakups.
They taste: A lot of cheese.
The end result is the recommendation falls flat. And that’s the danger of trying to recommend something so incredibly subjective to someone else.
The Pizza You Know vs The Pizza You Don’t
When it comes to pizza, convenience has incredible weight. If you can get a decent pizza around the corner, is it worth traveling a few miles away to try a new pizza? After all, it’s pizza. The core ingredients are the same, how much better could a good pizza be?
I think that if someone claims they can’t find good pizza in Pittsburgh, a factor must be lack of adventure. There is a thrill to trying a new place, discovering new flavors and this outreach will only enhance your love for pizza. Putting new and unusual pizzas into your mouth will help you understand what you like and don’t like about pizza. Eating bad pizza makes the pizza you like even better. I’ve eaten an eclectic amount of pizza that I think I’m becoming a sauce boy (a sauce boy is a pizza fan who loves and savors the sauce on the pizza over any other ingredient).
But if you don’t eat pizza frequently or are on a pizza budget, justifying $30 to try something that might not be as good as a mediocre staple is daunting.
Luckily I wrote a whole book dedicated to helping you find really great pizza in Pittsburgh.
Only in New York!
People really like New York pizza. A big sloppy pizza that you must fold to eat properly. Cheese and grease overflowing on top of the pizza like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
If your idea of great pizza is New York Pizza then what you get in Pittsburgh might not fit that exact definition. We don’t have a ton of slice shops, the cheese is often a different mix of shredded provolone and mozzarella and, unless shops are reverse osmosing their water, there’s the mythical water factor to contend with.
The pizzas we celebrate in this city are their own style of pizza. They are purposefully not New York City Pizza. They are carefully tuned to the frequency of the region’s palate. Which is why if you go two hours north of the city your pizza will taste like sugar and you will no longer get WDVE.
We have a few pizza shops that focus directly on making NYC pizza, but they must be sought out. Rockaway is one of them, but also A Taste of New York Pizza is replicating the big-city delicacy. For my money, I enjoy Fazio’s when I’m craving a sloppy slice or Slice On Broadway (coming soon to the South Side Works!)
So, I guess let’s get out of our comfort zone and try some new pizzas. Also, tell your friends about this newsletter. My goal is to eradicate this notion that finding good pizza in Pittsburgh is difficult.
An Ode to Badamo’s Sauce Stripes
Badamo's pizza, a rare sighting Your beautiful golden pelt Slashed and cut The crimson line runs from tip to tip My bites strategically hunt for the savory sauce A feral fox hunting a sanguine squirrel When the juice hits my system overloads with flavor Pizza ceases to exist The sauce is all I'm looking for.
Wow what an update! Thanks for taking the time to read this
Please consider sharing or telling all your pizza friends. It’s not every day you come across a newsletter featuring a cornucopia of local pizza news. How cool is that?
Pizza ya later!
-Dan Tallarico, Pizza Journalist