Ask ten Americans for a pizza and you'll get ten different objects. One is a floppy triangle you fold in half and eat standing on a sidewalk. Another needs a fork and a knife, and weighs as much as a small cat. A third comes in squares, cut so you can hold it in one hand and a beer in the other, and a fourth is baked in a pan that used to hold bolts in a car factory. Nobody planned this. Pizza arrived with Italian immigrants around the turn of the 20th century, landed in a handful of cities, and each city bent it to its own ovens, its own cheese and its own pride. Here's what defines each style, who really started it (every one of these origin stories has an argument attached), and where you can still eat the real thing.
How Pizza Got to America
The standard line is that Lombardi's on Spring Street in Manhattan's Little Italy was America's first pizzeria, licensed in 1905 by Gennaro Lombardi. The restaurant itself says so, and it's still serving pizza on Spring Street today. The standard line is also shaky. Researchers digging into immigration records in 2019 found that Lombardi didn't reach the United States until November 1904, at 17, as a laborer, which makes it hard to see him as the owner in 1905. One theory is that a man named Filippo Milone started the place. And earlier pizzerias in New York's Italian neighborhoods are on record from 1894 and 1903. Lombardi's also closed in 1984 and reopened in 1994 a block away, so the title of longest continuously running pizzeria usually goes to Papa's Tomato Pies in New Jersey, open since 1912. Take "first" as a good story and "among the first" as the fact.
What's solid is the picture. Pizza reached the US in the 1890s with Neapolitan and other southern Italian immigrants, and it stayed in their neighborhoods for decades, mostly under the name "tomato pie." The word pizza only entered English in the 1930s, and pizzerias multiplied fast in the late 1940s. The popular explanation is that American soldiers came home from Italy hungry for it, and that's partly folklore: the pizzerias were already there, and the boom owes as much to cheap ingredients, new ovens and the first chains. For the Italian side of the story, from Naples flatbread to the modern pie, read our history of pizza.
New York: Thin, Foldable and Sold by the Slice
New York-style pizza is hand-tossed, usually 18 to 24 inches across, and cut into eight big wedges. The crust is crisp only at the edge and soft and bendy underneath, which is exactly why you fold it. The dough uses high-gluten flour, the sauce is plain tomato, and the cheese is dry grated mozzarella. Many New Yorkers credit the city's tap water for the dough, and some out-of-state pizza makers even ship it in.
It grew out of the coal-oven pizzerias of the early 1900s. Lombardi's alumnus Antonio "Totonno" Pero opened Totonno's on Coney Island in 1924, and its family has been looking for a buyer since 2024, so check before you ride the subway out. The slice shop is the later invention: pizza sold by the wedge to people on the move. The price used to track the subway fare so closely that there's a name for it, the Pizza Principle. The dollar slice has been squeezed by inflation: the biggest chain raised its price to $1.50 in 2023, and only a few shops still sell at a dollar, so read the sign before you order.
Two places worth the trip. Joe's on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village was founded in 1975 by Joe Pozzuoli, who came from Naples, and it's the textbook plain slice. And Di Fara on Avenue J in Midwood, Brooklyn, was made famous by Domenico DeMarco, who ran it from 1965 until his death in 2022, and the corner slice shop is still going. Plan your New York days with our 5 days in New York, and you'll pass a good slice every few blocks anyway.
Chicago: Deep Dish, Stuffed, and the Pizza Locals Actually Eat
Deep dish turns the pizza upside down: a tall, buttery crust that climbs the sides of a round pan, then a thick layer of cheese and toppings, with chunky tomato sauce on top. It's a knife-and-fork meal, not something to eat on the go. Pizzeria Uno says Ike Sewell invented it in 1943, with partner Ric Riccardo. The story is contested: a 1956 Chicago Daily News article credited the recipe to Uno's pizza cook, Rudy Malnati Sr., whose son Lou went on to open Lou Malnati's in 1971. Nobody disputes that it started at that corner of the Near North Side. Uno and its sister restaurant Pizzeria Due, a block apart, still serve it there.
By the mid-1970s Chicago added stuffed pizza, with a second thin layer of dough under the sauce. Nancy's, founded by Rocco Palese, and Giordano's both developed it, and Palese based his on his mother's Easter pie from Basilicata. Stuffed is even heavier than deep dish, which is a lot to say.
Here's the part that surprises visitors: many Chicagoans eat the other kind more often than deep dish. Grubhub's 2013 delivery data said so, though other analysts questioned it. The other kind is a thin, crisp crust cut into small squares, usually called tavern-style. The name is newer than the pizza, and locals argue about it: it seems to date fromChicago internet forums in the 2000s, and some Chicago pizza makers say it was never a style at all, just pizza. The story that bars served it to keep customers drinking is one origin tale among several, and Milwaukee has its own claims to the same thin, square-cut pie. For the real thing, Vito & Nick's on South Pulaski Road has served thin-crust squares for generations, and its site says it's open seven days a week. It's cash only.
New Haven: Apizza, Charred on Purpose
Say it "ah-beetz." In Connecticut, the apizza is thin, oblong and baked in a coal-fired oven above 650 degrees Fahrenheit, so the crust blisters and blackens in places. Locals have a line for that: it's not burnt, it's charred. A classic order is a "plain" pie, which means tomato, oregano and a dusting of grated pecorino. Mozzarella is a topping you request. And it's sold whole, not by the slice.
Frank Pepe opened on Wooster Street on June 16, 1925, and its white clam pie, topped with fresh littleneck clams, garlic, olive oil and cheese, is the most famous thing on the menu. Up the same street, Sally's opened in 1938, founded by Frank Pepe's nephew Salvatore "Sally" Consiglio, and the two places have been rivals for decades. A third name completes the trinity: Modern Apizza on State Street, which is closed on Mondays. Expect a wait at Pepe's and Sally's, and consider ordering ahead.
Detroit: Square, Crispy and Baked in a Car Part
Detroit-style pizza is a rectangle with a thick, airy, chewy crust and a crunchy, almost fried bottom. The toppings go to the very edge, and Wisconsin brick cheese melts down the sides of the pan and caramelizes into a lacy crust called frico. The sauce often goes on top, sometimes in stripes, which is why some call it "red top." It's cut into squares and eaten by hand.
The pan is the story. Early Detroit pizza was baked in blue steel trays made for use in auto plants, to catch drips or hold small parts. The usual origin is 1946 at Buddy's Rendezvous, a former speakeasy on Conant Street owned by Gus and Anna Guerra, with credit going either to Anna's mother's recipe for Sicilian sfincione or to an employee, Connie Piccinato. The recipe is a Sicilian pan pizza in disguise. Oddly, the "Detroit-style" label is young: the Buddy's brand officer says he didn't hear it until the 1980s, and as late as 2007 some local media still called it Sicilian. Buddy's still bakes it on Conant Street and at other locations around Michigan, and its site is promoting its 80th anniversary this year.
The Rest of the Map
Smaller styles are worth a detour if you're nearby. St. Louis-style has a cracker-thin crust, a sweet sauce and Provel, a processed blend of cheddar, Swiss and provolone developed in the 1950s by a St. Louis grocery. It's cut in squares. Imo's, which opened in 1964, helped make it the city's default. A theory says founder Ed Imo, a tile setter, inspired the cut, and it's a theory, since the square cut was around earlier. Provel divides people, and that's half the fun.
California pizza arrived around 1980, at almost the same moment in two kitchens. Ed LaDou was experimenting at Prego in San Francisco, and the cafe at Chez Panisse in Berkeley was doing its own thing with goat cheese and duck sausage. Wolfgang Puck hired LaDou for Spago in West Hollywood and the idea went national. The rule is simple: if it's fresh, it can go on a pizza. If you're heading to the Bay Area, our 5 days in San Francisco guide has the rest of the trip.
Two more to know. In New Jersey, the Trenton tomato pie puts the cheese down first and the sauce on top; Papa's Tomato Pies, open since 1912, also sells a mustard pie. On Long Island, grandma pie is a thin rectangular sheet-pan pizza, cheese under sauce, that reproduces what Italian grandmothers made without a pizza oven. It may date to the 1970s, and food writers often credit King Umberto's in Elmont with putting it on the menu.
And a twist for Hawaiian pizza: it's Canadian. Sam Panopoulos, a Greek-born Canadian, is credited with making the first one in 1962 at the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, and he named it after the can of pineapple he used. As usual, there are other claims, among them a pineapple pizza reported in Portland, Oregon in 1957.
Which One to Try First
If you can only eat one, I'd go with the style the city does best. In New York, that's a plain slice from a counter. In Chicago, it's a thin tavern pie first and deep dish for the experience. In New Haven, it's a plain tomato pie with a white clam pie to split. In Detroit, it's a square with the cheese caramelized to the edge.
The short version of how they differ:
- New York: hand-tossed, 18 to 24 inches, plain tomato sauce, dry mozzarella, eight wedges you fold and eat on the go.
- Chicago deep dish: tall buttery crust in a round pan, cheese first and chunky sauce on top, eaten with a knife and fork.
- Chicago tavern: thin and crisp, cut in small squares.
- New Haven: thin, oblong, coal-fired and charred, tomato and pecorino unless you ask for mozzarella, sold whole.
- Detroit: thick, airy rectangle with a crunchy bottom, brick cheese to the edges, sauce on top.
- St. Louis: cracker-thin, sweet sauce, Provel, cut in squares.
- Trenton: thin, cheese and toppings first, sauce last.
If you're building a food trip, our post on the Philly cheesesteak covers the other great American sandwich fight, and the history of pizza explains where all of this started. The United States country page has the wider picture, and 5 days in New York is the best place to start. Check hours before you go, because small pizzerias close on odd days and sell out. And whichever style you pick, expect a local to tell you that yours is the wrong one. That argument is part of the meal.
