Ode to the Sloppy Pizza Pie
It's Sloppy Pizza Friday, a new holiday I made up for the purposes of celebrating the art of a floppy soppy pizza.
Hi there!
I had a heck of a week and I hit the point in my fugue state of exhaustion where my body began reverberation with a simple request. It was quiet at first, like a little kid tugging on my sleeve to get my attention. A quivering in my belly yearning for a pizza that is so flimsy and sloppy it could be confused with a boneless jellyfish washed up on shore.
The week progressed and the whisper turned into a murmur. The murmur soon gave way to a shout: Get some sloppy, floppy pizza. So I did. I had to. My bones were creaking for it. Maybe they craved the surplus of grease to keep my joints from fusion together.
Sloppy Pizza is a panacea for the doldrums of life. It rips you out of any rut you’re in and propels you back into the stratosphere. Like a cold Coke, there’s something universal to a Sloppy Pizza that no matter your stature or station in life it perks you up. If you know someone that is hesitant around Sloppy Pizza, you might want to investigate why that might be. They could be some sort of pizza thief or like, a pizza Dracula.
If you’re an avid reader of the newsletter you know that I frequent more artisan pizza shops. If I’m going the length to grab pizza I usually go gourmet. I like the sense of adventure trying a new Sicilian pie or a bizarre mix of toppings that Spirit dreams up. But you gotta go back to the basics every so often to refresh and revise where pizza came from. Yes, these new pizza shops are standing on the shoulder of giants but those pizza giants are still around to pay reverence to.
My go to Sloppy Pizza (which might be one of the most underrated shops in the city) is Fazio’s Pizza on Penn Ave. Is it Bloomfield? Is it Lawrenceville? There’s no way to know, but it has its own kind of charm. It’s dingy and sometimes when you walk in John Fazio will be behind the counter trying to charm anyone in the store. Donned in gold chains, John Fazio has asked me how my motorcycle is (which I don’t have) and how the kid is doing (this was six years before I had a kid). Despite getting zero facts correct about me I find his act delightful in the pizza business.
I go no toppings on my Sloppy Pizza because a good Sloppy Pizza is dense and plentiful as it is. Key to a Sloppy Pizza is a layer of cheese that is as thick as a shag carpet. You want the crust laminated in this cheese. So gooey that you can pull it off in one piece if you want to. Or, it immediately is torn from the pizza with the first bite.
The crust needs to fold and create river of grease that trickles down the tip. Grease is a critical component to the Sloppy Pizza. You want to feel slightly gross after eating a slice, but not gross enough that you are frightened off. In fact, you should eat these slices so fast and furious that you’ve eaten half the pizza before your stomach realized you have exceeded max capacity. I am incredibly bloated as I write this sentence.
I hope you remember to grab yourself a Sloppy Pizza at least once a month. Do you have a preferred Sloppy Pizza shop? Let me know, would love to check more spots out. Pittsburgh Pizza’s foundation is built on sloppy pies. In my mind, there’s no beat Luciano’s in the North Hills for that extra sloppy Friday night pie.
Sloppy pie ya later!
-Dan Tallarico, Pizza Journalist
Is Luciano's open? Or out of business?