Pizza

Styles

There are a few styles of pizza.

• “Normal”?

  I’m just gonna put this here because I don’t know what you call pizza that doesn’t fall under the following categories.

• New York or thin crust style

  Super cheap, really thin crust pizza. The crust is so thin that it’ll flop if you don’t hold it correctly. To properly eat this pizza, fold it in the shape of a “V”.

  People (New Yorkers, to the extent that they’re “people”) will tell you how great of a style of pizza this is, and will subsequently talk shit about your place of residence (which is California, because you’re a smart and attractive person) and how it doesn’t have good New York style pizza. Ignore them. New York style isn’t a style, it’s just dollar slice pizza born out of a need to make ever cheaper pizza with fewer ingredients. Talk shit about them for not having good burrito options.

  Anyway, there actually are some good New York style pizza places I like. Mostly I like Joe’s Pizza from the time I lived in New York while going to NYU for grad school. If you’re in Shanghai, there’s also a Joe’s Pizza (probably, or there was at one point), but another good thin crust place is Homeslice pizza.

• Chicago-style or deep dish pizza

  Thick pizza you eat with a fork and knife. Really puts the “pie” in “pizza pie” (which nobody says unless they’re singing “That’s Amore”, and those people will be dead soon enough). I really enjoy this style, but it’s not a casual pizza. It’s not a pizza you get on the go. This is a pizza you have to plan for.

  Some recommended places in California: Zachary’s Pizza (in Rockridge and on Solano) is pretty good.

• Detroit-style or pan-fried pizza

  

  I feel like this is the pizza style you get at Pizza Hut.

  Good places in the Bay Area: Joyride Pizza.

• Neopolitan pizza

  “Authentic” Italian-style pizza. I mean, is pizza really still Italian at this point? When you go to another country, what chains of pizza do you see? Dominos, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s. Are those Italian? No.

  I’ve been to a couple Neopolitan pizza places. There was one in Shanghai that I liked, but now I can’t remember the name of it.

• Pinsa

  

  This is some type of Italian pizza. I forget exactly how this differs from normal pizza, but they do something different with the dough. I had it for the first time at Gusto Pinsa Romana in SF in February 2023. In their menu, Gusto claims that pinsa is healthier, having to do with either more or less hydration.

Places

Here are some pizza places I may or may not like.

• Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley (webpage, map)

  

  The type of pizza that can only be made in California. They only have one type of pizza each day. It’s always vegetarian, and it’s always good. Make sure you get some their spicy green sauce.

  Check out my more-dedicated page to them at /cheeseboard.

• Joe’s Pizza in New York (map)

  Fine, when I was living in New York, I’d get this pizza a lot. Maybe it’s because it appeared in Spider-Man (2002).

  It’s a bit more “expensive” than other slices (at around $3.00 to $3.50 per slice, IIRC), but I felt like the cheese was always pretty good.

  They also brought a Joe’s Pizza shop to Shanghai for some reason (which was really weird since it only exists in New York otherwise), and I knew a guy that worked there. I felt like the cheese in Shanghai was a little bit less melted than what you’d get in New York. However, the reason for this—as the guy explained to me—is that the local palate didn’t like melted or “gooey” textures, so they had to change the style slightly.

• Pizza Hut (everywhere)

  I remember they used to give you a free personal pan pizza if you read a certain number of books. What happened to that?

  Pizza Hut is pretty interesting to me in that it varies from place to place and across time. Apparently in the 80’s Pizza Hut used to be pretty nice. I feel like it was still pretty nice when I was a kid. But as time went on, they got rid of their unique Pizza Hut architecture and became more of a fast-food experience rather than a restaurant.

  In some places, though, Pizza Hut is still a sit down restaurant with a menu. In the Philippines, for example, it’s a sit down place with servers. I think in Shanghai I also remember some Pizza Huts in malls being restaurants. Pizza Hut in Shanghai also had some interesting different flavors, like pizza with seafood on it.

• Gusto Pinsa Romana in SF (map)

  They serve “pinsa”, which is a different type of pizza in the way the dough is made. It was pretty good. They had both sweet and savory pizzas, and the sweet ones were surprisingly good.

• Flour and Water in SF (map)

  I actively dislike this place. I mean, the name suggests that there’s not much on it, but really. You think NY-style pizza is pretty bare? Well, I guess Flour and Water isn’t bare so much as… I dunno… not filling? I think especially given how popular it is and the price.

  I mean, I think their pizza is decent. The flavors are good. I think I was more disappointed with the quantity of the pizza as a whole and maybe the quantity of cheese. It is a popular place, though, and they have decent outdoor seating (at least during Covid). I bet this is a pretty decent date place.

• Homeslice in Shanghai

  My go-to pizza place when I was living in Shanghai. Probably the last time I went was sometime in 2019.

  They’re thin crust NY-style pizza. I think my favorite was their “white” pizza.

• Zachary’s Pizza Chicago-style pizza in Rockridge and Berkeley

  Pretty good Chicago-style pizza.

• Spinning Dough in West Oakland (map)

  Went here recently in August of 2023. It’s a nice place with interesting flavors like ube and okonomiyaki, shown below. The other cool thing about this place is, like the name suggests, you can see them actually spinning the dough to make the pizza.

  

  

  

  This place is kind of in an isolated, semi-sketch part of Oakland, with not many other businesses around. The family that works here though is super nice.

The Question of Pineapple

Is pineapple on pizza a good time or a crime? People will tell you that putting pineapple on pizza is a sin. Fuck/F them. You’re an American/a goddamned American which means you have the right—no, the duty—to do whatever the fuck/hell you want.

“Oohhh, but it’s not authentic,” you say/whine, “they would never do that in Italy!” Yeah? They sure seem fine putting fucking tomatoes on pizza, even though tomatoes aren’t originally from Italy. Hundreds of years ago some smart Italian probably went “yo! you gotta try this tomato on your dry-ass mozzarella sticks!” and I bet some fuckers/people went “Oh. Oh no. Not tomatoes. They’re weird.” Those people are dead now, just like the idea that you can stop people from putting whatever the fuck they want on pizza.

I think what changed my mind about pineapple on pizza was seeing the weird shit/what they put on pizza in Shanghai. I’ve seen, like, seafood, octopus, and I think durian on pizza. And these weren’t from some crazy mom-and-pop place, they were from fucking Domino’s, dude. What was I gonna do, say “Yo what the fuck/Hey, you can’t do that!”? After what we fucking did to Italian pizza?