Geography Is Pizza: New York, Chicago or Something Else?

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Pizza has really become one of the most global dishes. From its humble beginnings as a street food in Italy, to becoming localized in various ways all around the world. This has lead to some of the most contentious debates: Does pineapple belong on pizza? Does New York or Chicago have better pizza? Should Pizza be cut into squares? Everyone has an opinion! In this episode, Geoff and Hunter explore how pizza traveled the world, and dive deep into a few of the more popular styles of pizza in the United States.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Hey, Jeff, do you likepizza? Yeah, broadly, I would
say I'm a fan of pizza.I don't know very many people who who
aren't a fan of pizza in somecapacity, even people, you know,
I have a few friends who don'tlike dairy or who are lactose intolerant,
even they still like pizza, however, So it just variations of it,

(00:27):
or there's certain kinds of cheeses thatare better for whatever. There's just people
who like I think pizza as adish. It comes in a lot of
different varieties, in a lot ofdifferent styles, and actually a lot of
people can enjoy it. Yeah you'revegetarian or what have you. I know,
if you had said no, weprobably would have just ended the episode
here. I think it wouldn't havebeen worth it to go any further.
So the follow up question then,to that rather simple question, is what

(00:50):
is a good pizza judged by inyour opinion? For me? So,
I mean I have some pretty strongopinions, because I wouldn't say, like
I see, I think there arepeople who broadly just love pizza, right,
and they're gonna love all kinds ofpizza, whether it's you know,
you know, their local fast foodchain, Domino's, Pizza ho, what
have you, or something fancy Forme, I look for something that has

(01:11):
a good amount of sauce on it, okay, because to me, the
cheese is almost an afterthought, right, I want I want the bread and
the sauciness and the garlickiness of itall, and then there's the toppings of
course, and the cheese. Butthose are kind of like extras, right,
those are the those are the thingsthat come on top. It's like,
I want, I want there tobe a nice sauce sauce sauce ratio

(01:32):
compared to everything else. That's veryfundamentals have to be correct. Yeah,
exactly. I think that you're notalone and having strong opinions on pizza.
I think that's a pretty common thing, particularly in the United States, and
a lot of what we'll talk abouttoday is regional variations in the United States.
But you know, controversies are widespread. Some people get sort of bent

(01:53):
out of shape if somebody else iseating a pizza they don't like for some
reason. You know, the considerationsinclude, as you mentioned, the crust
is really important, the mere presenceor absence of sauce, because you know,
some have sauce, and some havered sauce, and some have something
else, whether there is sauce orsome kind of fat like olive oil put

(02:13):
on top of it. The toppingsis where we get into really pretty strong
debates at what temperature and how longshould be baked. I mean, all
these things people have opinions on withregard to pizza, And of course it's
not the only food that is subjectto this kind of debate, but I
think with pizza in particular, geographiesoften at the heart of the debate.
Yeah, I mean, as you'retalking about, as you're talking about sort

(02:37):
of toppings and people having very specificopinions on specific toppings, the one that
immediately jumps to mind is pineapple,right this, Yeah, of course,
yeah, that, and that obviouslyis associated with a very specific place,
which is Hawaii. That's right.And so like the geographies at play,

(02:57):
you know that that go into alsothe opinions that people have about different kinds
of pizzas, whether it's Hawaiian styleor New York style, Chicago style,
which is also Chicago's Also, Iknow a lot of people have a lot
of opinions about deep dish and whetherthat's we'll probably get into it, but
about whether that's technically pizza or notcertain I've seen people say that it's it's
actually more of a meat pie orsomething like that. I like, I

(03:20):
don't know, Like, yeah,some people feel so strongly they don't think
something deserves to be called pizza.Perhaps, and yeah, people might say,
hey, that's not how it's madein Naples, or that's not how
it's made in New York and sothat's not really pizza, or how could
you eat pizza with pineapple on it? Kind of situation. It's not just
that you're neutral, it's like,oh, you like what you like.
I like what I like, butsort of almost being offended. That's that

(03:44):
exists. As in topping on zaza, I think I think that's one of
the more controversial ones. I don'twant to really stake a claim on that,
but it's interesting that it seems toraise emotions when people are talking about
toppings on pizza. I should alsosay, before we go any further full
disclosure that I have pizza industry experience. I don't know if you know this,
but as a teenager I worked atLittle Caesars. Oh interesting, now,

(04:06):
I didn't know that and I didn'tknow. Well, I guess this
would have been a while ago.Does Little Caesar still exist? It does
still exist. In fact, there'sone probably three quarters of a mile from
my house. Oh well, that'sI mean, I don't freak. You
know, I'm sort of the lovehate thing when you work as a as
a teenager at a place, andI sort of have the same thing with

(04:28):
Dunkin Donuts. It's sort of youknow, flashbacks and this kind of stuff.
But this is a place Little Caesars, where you don't make odd numbers
of pizza. You only make ormaybe they do now, but at the
time it was always like double pizza, so you're making two or four or
six or eight. It was neverthree pizzas or one pizza. Where I
worked, there were a bank ofphones, like push button phones on the

(04:49):
wall, and you know, onerang, you answer it and then it
would jump to the next phone,and there was no place to put the
phone. There was no button toput it on whole. So if you
were working the phones, you mighthave two or three phones receivers in your
hand and you couldn't mute the otherperson. You're just sort of taking everybody's
order. And it was sort ofset up for chaos. You know,

(05:11):
this is what things were like backin the day. And I remember it
well because it was the summer ofthe Metsa Metza special Mesa Metza, so
it had I believe it had meatpizza. Meat pizza had ground beef,
sausage, bacon, Canadian bacon,and pepperoni on it. This was the
special, and I would make peopleorder it by name. I'd say,

(05:32):
yeah, I want to get yourmeat Special. I'm like, which one
are you talking about? You know, the meat Special. I'm not sure
which one you're talking about. MeetsaMiza. Yeah, that's the one.
Yeah, I kind of have peoplehave to go into it. So anyways,
that's I do have some industry backgroundhere. I wanted to to come
clean on you know. I waslooking for statistics because a lot of times
we'd like to to introduce some statisticsabout how things are working nationally and globally,

(05:56):
and I found them kind of hardto come by, and I did
find somebody wasn't one hundred percent confidentlike where they even came from. So
I'm not going to go into toomany of them, but I did find
one that seemed to repeat it ina few places, so I will at
least broach and I don't know howdependable this is highest per capita consumption of
pizza by country. I have thetop five here. I'm wondering if you

(06:20):
have a guess as to what ison that list. I mean, I
my first guess would be the UnitedStates has to be number one. I
know. Obviously Italy is sort ofthe place that pizza is, you know,
most closely culturally attached to. Imean, like Pizza Hut, little
Caesars that you talked about, Domino's, these masks and now global change.

(06:43):
That's right, pizza Hut. Youcan find pizza huts, and you can
find pizza Hut in Europe in Italy. So Italy is that would be my
guest. Italy is on this listat number five. Okay, Germany is
number four, The United Kingdom isnumber three. You know. Again,
this is where I'm I would putI would be guessing the United States would
be first. Apparently it's second accordingto this information I've heard. I kind

(07:08):
of find it hard to believe,but apparently the country with the highest per
capital of consumption is Norway. I'mnot huh. I don't know if it's
a tough one for me to takein, but apparently in Norway it's mostly
frozen pizza. Like, frozen pizzais enormously popular there. Okay, I
mean in volume it's the United States, I think, but in terms of

(07:30):
per capita it might not be.I read a statistic. Man, don't
know if it's true that on average, three hundred and fifty pieces of pizza
are eaten every second in the UnitedStates. This actually seems low to me
in a way. But that seemspretty low to me. Yeah, that's
an average throughout the day, Isuppose, but yeah, it seems low,
like I could I could see thatbeing a statistic for just New York,
right right, yeah, exactly.So again I'm extra beat of caution

(07:58):
with granted, ryea, with thisparticular grain of salt with this thing.
But let's talk about how long peoplebeen eating pizza. I mean, okay,
you know, we've been eating pizzaour entire lives, but how long
have people been eating pizza? Andit's kind of hard to say, you
know, did people in ancient civilizationseat pizza? And they probably didn't eat

(08:18):
the kind of pizzas that we're talkingabout and that we're thinking about. However,
they all consumed flatbreads embellished with toppings, which sounds kind of like pizza,
you know, that's that's kind ofwhat pizza is. You know.
I've made this similar argument for thesport soccer. Right, Soccer is a
pretty pretty at its most basic,it's a pretty fundamentally rudimentary sport. Right,

(08:41):
there are two areas you're trying toget a ball into, and people
are going to kick it in andtry and get it right. And so
it's not surprising, you know,as if you start tracing the history of
soccer back, you're going to findvariations of that exact same idea. They
go way way back before the moderniteration of soccer across civilism. Yep,
absolutely right, Yeah, pizza seemsvery similar. Right, It's it's it's

(09:03):
flatbread with a sauce on it.Right, that's some sort It doesn't even
need to be tomato sauce. No, it can be any kind of stuff.
It could be anything, right.In fact, it's there is some
speculation that pizza might go back beforerecorded history. Now, the reason we
don't know it is because it's notrecorded. That's what recorded history is it's
stuff that's written down, So thatgoes back to maybe five thousand BCE in

(09:28):
Mesopotamia thirty two hundred Egypt. Thatwe have a record, written record of
things, but there are other waysto sort of discern history. And so
apparently Egyptians made flower from wild grassseeds as long as fourteen thousand years ago,
so this would have been at thedawn or the pre dawn of agriculture.
So maybe they made flatbread out ofit, and maybe they put something

(09:52):
on top of it and stuck iton an oven or a hot rock for
eleven minutes. I mean, that'sa possibility. So this may have gone
on for a long time. Iwouldn't even say it's a possibility to me.
It's like pizza is pizza is justa way of eating bread, all
yeah, yeah, no, that'sa good way. And bread is one
of the Yeah, bread is oneof the oldest sort of staple foods that

(10:13):
humanity has had since agriculture has beenaround. And so yeah, I mean
it just it makes so much sense, like, yeah, we don't have
any record of anybody doing this,but somebody probably did. I have to
believe that something people have been eatingpizza for over ten thousand years, I
mean, gotta be true. Asfor recorded history, for what we know

(10:33):
is back as twenty two hundred beesEgyptians made flatbread topped with a doa,
which is a kind of mix ofcrushed nuts, herbs, and spices.
So that's very pizza like. Aroundthree thousand years ago, Assyrians and Mesopotamia
it a thin dough topped with meatthat sounds like pizza. Sounds very pizza
like. I've found a few sourcesthat claim that the Greek geographer and historian

(10:54):
Herodotus wrote about Babylonian recipes that soundkind of like pizza. So this is
I think this is now heroduss isfifth episode in a row, not just
total fifth episode in a row thathe's made an appearance. I know this
might seem forced, but actually stumbledacross this, So yeah, it's there
for us. Yeah, nobody expectsHero Auditus to appear, and then there

(11:15):
he is, and then and thenhe's eating pizza. So yeah, let's
see how long we can keep goingwith that. And egypt proto pizza goes
way back as well. Apparently,a baked round season flatbread was frequently served
at the Pharaoh's birthday, so thepizza party itself seems to be thousands of
years old. Like that, whatdo you have on your birthday? You

(11:39):
have pizza. I mean the pharaohhad pizza on his birth It's amazing.
Right. In Italy, flatbread goesback to around BCE, so that goes
way back as well, and fromabout nine thirty to seven thirty BCE,
Etruscan, Greeks and Persians made flatbreadtype situations that were pretty close to modern
pizzas. So this has been goingon. It's well grained. Let's jump

(12:00):
ahead though, to the industrial age, right, We're gonna jump let's way
back to industrial age, and we'regoing to find ourselves in late eighteenth century
Naples, also known as Knapuli.This is where we track pizza from today,
and this is where we consider pizzato be the origin from, even
though there might be all this otherstuff, like your soccer anology I think
was a good one, Like itmay have been something similar to it might

(12:24):
have been done someplace else, butthis is the way we're able to track
it. And this was like probablywhen it was starting to be marketed of
as as the entity that it istoday, Right, yeah, and I
think it was maybe called that.Even at that point it was pretty contained
to Napoli for a while. Sothis is in the southwest Campagna region of
which Naples is the capital, inthis part of Italy, and at this

(12:48):
time Naples was one of the biggercities in Europe, right, so it
was definitely, you know, throughoutmedieval times it was the city state,
huge center of trade. Fishing wasa big indusial there. And then once
you get into the seventeen hundreds,the population starts to grow very dramatically.
So between seventeen hundred and seventeen fortyeight, the population nearly doubled to four

(13:11):
hundred thousand people. And as thecity grew, of course, one of
the things that happens is that theamount of people living in poverty grew as
well, and so pizzas were soldby street vendors and became a very cheap
and convenient meal for the poor.So this is interesting. This is kind
of the story we told about howsushi began street food that was not fancy,

(13:33):
that was versatile, easy to eaton the run, and people late
it in the streets. So it'sa folk cuisine. The way it starts
out. It's funny though, becauseunlike sushi, which I think, at
least here inside the United States,has become more associated with I would say,
sit down, fancier sort of restaurant, I would say, pizza still

(13:54):
holds to that. That's historic legacy, right, just hopping into a place.
I mean, you can get afancy pizza. But of course,
how often, like I'm walking homefrom wherever, and you know, there's
like a pizza by the slice place, and I'll top in, I'll grab
like a slice for a couple ofdollars or three dollars. I don't know
how much they cost, but andthen I'll keep walking on home. Yeah,
I mean, that's it's a famousthing. And I remember living in

(14:16):
San Francisco and doing the same thing, and I would try to get back
to this place in my neighborhood beforeit closed, which was like two which
was pretty late. But I meanthat was a place where you could get
a bite to eat, you know, after you're out for the night,
one o'clock in the morning or something, and there'd be a bunch of other
people there too, lining up gettinga slice of pizza. So one of

(14:37):
the things that pizza is going forit is that it uses a lot of
inexpensive, readily available, and flavorfulingredients. So if you change the ingredients
a little bit, you're changing thetaste. So you could eat it over
and over again, it's not exactlythe same every time. The simplest and
most common of these flatbread pizzas atthe time were topped with garlic, lard,
and salt. Very simple. Aslight change in toppings, of course,

(15:01):
would give you a bunch of differenttastes, including horse milk, cheese,
herring, like fish, or basil, so those were also popular items.
And then some had tomatoes on it. Now tomatoes, Dojeff, you
know where tomatoes are native to?Oh? I actually I have no idea
where tomatoes are native to. I'venever really thought about that. I would

(15:22):
have assumed probably it'll yeah, no, it would seem like that from our
association with Red Sauce and Italy.Tomatoes are from the Americas. They're from
South America, Central America, andthe part of North America that's Mexico today.
So those tomatoes had to get toEurope at some point, and apparently
that happened around fifteen forty eight,that they showed up in Italy and Tuscany.

(15:46):
First. So two things. One, this is very similar to the
potato right, which happens to rhymewith tomato, and I don't want to
make that I want to suggest thatthere's a pattern here, but I think
that's funny spirits with simpler things inthis exactly. I also think it's funny
that the so there's a really funmap out there, funny map, I

(16:07):
should say where it's It's basically there'sa map of Europe and then you know,
divided, there's like a line thatsort of dash line across Europe and
on the north side it says potatoEurope and on the south side it says
tomato Europe. And it's really funny. It's like that's how it gets divided,
right, because you get to likeSpain and everything, and there's more
tomatoes being used. But you getthe Germany and obviously like the UK and

(16:29):
Ireland and everything, there's more potatoesbeing Yeah, there's a similar line between
the kind of grains that dominate,so it's wheat in the south and rye
and the north and some interesting dividinglines there. But as you were saying,
a lot of people associate you know, tomatoes, well, they they've
always been part of Italian cooking,and of course that's not true because it
didn't get there until the fifteen hundreds. The tomato became particularly popular in southern

(16:53):
Italy, where it was called pomidoro, which is translates as golden apple.
And initially tomatoes were dismissed by thehigh class in a similar way to potatoes,
now that you think, now thatyou mentioned, there's a lot of
similarities there. By the way,listener, we did a double episode on
potatoes, so go check it outafter. But people were suspicious of this,

(17:14):
and the wealthy in particular, andso it wasn't particularly popular with the
wealthy, and as a result,they weren't particularly expensive, and the low
cost is one of the things thatwas really attractive to the poor classes.
It's like, hey, this looksgood, we'll eat this, you know,
we can afford this, and soeventually it makes its way onto pizza
and it's a pasta as well.The tomatoes, and naples want to point

(17:36):
out, are grown in rich volcanicsoil, which gives them this very distinctive
sweetness, and a lot of peoplewill only make pizza sauce from canned tomatoes
from Napoli, for example, becausethey think that that's the way to do
it, that's the proper way.And there is I think some debate as
to whether it became a top acommon topping on pizza in the eighteenth of

(17:59):
the nineteenth century, but once itdid it, it stuck pretty hard,
and of course I think a lotof people make that association. Today,
let's talk more about Italy in thetwentieth century and it connection to pizza.
After we take a short break,great, we will be right back,

(18:23):
and we're back. It's the GeographyIs Everything podcast. We're talking about Geography
is Pizza, and we're talking abouthow the modern version of pizza arose in
Naples in southern Italy. And ifwe go sort of move our story from
the nineteen hundreds to the twentieth century, I'm sorry, from eighteen hundreds to

(18:45):
nineteen hundreds after Italian unification. ApparentlyKing Umberto and Queen Margherita visited Naples in
eighteen ninety nine, so right beforethe turn of the century. They were
used to very complex French specialties andthey decided they want to try something local.
So a local pizza maker came byand prepared three types of pizza for

(19:06):
them, and one was the onewith lard, horse cheese and basil.
The other one was with a littlefishies on it, kind of the anchovy
type things we might think about,ok. Yeah, and then the other
one was tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. So, Jeff, my question to
you is which of these do youthink was Queen Margarita's favorite. I'm gonna
guess the one that's named after thatMargharita. Yes, I had to throw

(19:33):
it out there. That's where thatcame from, right, Yeah, So
I mean this is I think partof what makes the food get a higher
profile too, is if the Queenlikes it, it's probably okay. I
think it instantly becomes popular all overItaly after that. But you know,
it's a regional specialty that eventually doesmigrate from place to place, as people
from from Naples moved from place toplace. In the nineteen thirties, in

(19:56):
particular, more and more people movedaway from Naples in search of jobs.
This is at a time when Italywas increasingly industrializing, which catalyzing the movement
of people from rural areas to urbanareas and then also to other parts of
Europe and eventually to the United Statesand Canada as well. And so Neapolitans
are moving, they're bringing their culture, they're bringing their cuisine, and they're

(20:18):
bringing their notion of pizza with themas well. During World War Two,
a lot of the Allied soldiers whowere stationed in Europe and in Italy became
very enamored with pizza because again it'sa very easy thing to eat, very
satisfying. And so following the warthere is more affordable air travel we've talked
about this episode, and that tocontribute to increase in tourism and restaurants throughout

(20:45):
Italy beginning to offer regional specialties notonly from their own region, but perhaps
from other regions as well. Andas this happens and pizza takes root in
different places, new ingredients are usedand local tastes and preferences are taken into
a and pizza becomes very popular throughoutItaly after World War Two. It wasn't
that it wasn't etn but it becomesvery high profile food spreads throughout Europe becomes

(21:08):
popular in Europe, and Neopolitan pizzaI think today is still sometimes used as
the standard for what might be consideredan authentic pizza. Now, I'm a
pretty I'm not a fan of theword authentic because I think who gets to
call something authentic? Right It's that'sa political moment right there, you get
to call something authentic. But Ithink the comparison is often to the Neapolitan

(21:32):
pizza, which is part of avery simple flat crust, you know,
thin crusted kind of pizza. AndI'm assuming this is is this the kind
of pizza that eventually gets exported tolike New York. That's it's funny you
should say that, because that isthe next thing we want to talk about
here, is pizza coming to theUnited States. Well, well I had
another thought before that too, becauseyou know, not to just keep bringing

(21:55):
back to our potato episode. Butthere's another sort of parallel here whereas that
that's the soldiers who were traveling throughBelgium at the time the World War Two
were introduced to French fries and that'ssort of how that's sort of how French
fries became such an American un UnitedStates treat and you know elsewhere as well.

(22:18):
It was because of the soldiers bringingback this idea, and they were
only called French fries because the Belgianswere speaking French. They were from Mollonia.
The idolate the distinction there and thenuance you bring to this because not
everybody knows that fries French fries freak, they're actually from Belgium. So that
was well done. I appreciate that. Yeah, shadow, I've been to

(22:38):
the French Fry Museum in and Bruges, well aware. Interesting, not even
in the French speaking part, butstill claimed by even creature. So let's
let's talk about pizza in the UnitedStates. And we're going to kind of
focus on this now because pizza becomessomething else in the United States and it

(22:59):
doesn't get adopted immediately by everybody.So in the early twentieth century, pizza
it's kind of known as an ItalianAmerican dish. It's seen maybe as exotic,
It's seen maybe you know, derisory, kind of oh this is ethnic
food or something like that, whichis this way that people used to talk
about things. But within you know, several decades, it becomes referred to

(23:22):
as an American food, if nota symbol of the United States itself.
Similarly to your fry example, soit goes from being not, you know,
more something that Italian immigrants are eatingand to something that everybody's eating.
There are a lot of varieties thatwe're going to go into here, but
the standard US pizza, the sortof standard commercial US pizza, I think,

(23:44):
compared to the Neapolitan pie, hasa lot of tomato, sauce,
probably more sauce, lots of cheeseoftentimes, and lots of toppings as well.
Sometimes there's heavy amounts of toppings onthese things. It's not true everywhere,
but this is generally a thing.It's people also have done things like
make pizza un bagels or English muffins. So people have adjusted it and adapted

(24:04):
it to various things. Oh whenI was when I was a kid,
I used to eat so many ofthose little frozen bagel bites, yes,
or pizza pizza bagels. I don'tremember what they're yeah, but yeah,
you're there. Was they were sogood. I mean, I'm sure they
were not very nutritious, and thereprobably isn't actually anything about you in them,
but they were very delicious, especiallyfor a ten year old Jeff right,

(24:26):
absolutely, and then that you couldeat multiple of them made you feel
like you were eating multiple pizzas andthat was pretty satisfied. Absolutely, absolutely,
But of course there's also many localand ardinisaul types of pizza, like
you know, fancy pizza, craftpizza, if you will, and so
we'll want to talk about those things. In past decades, pizza was called

(24:48):
pizza pie in the United States.I think that's still the case, probably
less so from its peak in thefifties and the sixties, but you still
hear that, right, pizza pie. Maybe not. I would say it's
probably already rare. Okay, I'mfrom from my East Coast bias is showing
here. Maybe if I do,it's probably on like a like a menu
at a restaurant that is probably ofthe fancier variety. But like if I'm

(25:11):
stopping into my local sort of youknow, pizza place on just grabbing a
slice, I don't see the wordpizza pie anywhere. Interesting, Okay,
Yeah, I just feel like maybein the Northeast where I grew up,
people would refer to it a littlebit more often as a pie or even
just a pie. If you're goingto get a pie, it was usually
understood, based on context, thatyou were going to get pizza, and
you weren't necessarily going to get anapple pie or something like that. I

(25:34):
think that would hold up out here. Okay, Yeah, so somebody told
me I'm going to go get apie, I'm like, great, get
something with some key limen, andI'm all over it. I suppose that's
probably increasingly true. But apparently therewas a time in the United States where
pie was very widely used. Soas the United States urbanizes, Italian restaurants
and pizza reas spread throughout the countryand initially to places with large manufacturing industries.

(25:57):
So when we get into the regionalpizza styles in just a little bit,
we'll get to explore some of theones. We'll explore the cities that
were very large manufacturing areas. Andthat's where pizza really took off in the
United States. You know we weretalking about before the break, how after
World War Two, pizza gained enormouspopularity throughout Italy throughout Europe, and the

(26:21):
same thing happened in the United States. So, after World War Two,
soldiers who served in Europe, inItaly and elsewhere had developed a taste for
pizza, and this helped catalyze thenew interest in pizza across the United States,
and of course things were changing inthe United States. People, not
everybody, but generally there was abit more affluence, and people were more

(26:41):
mobile, and the idea of eatingon the go is something that doesn't necessarily
even exist in a lot of countries, became really popular here, and pizza
kind of lends itself to that,right, I mean, this was I
guess I don't know specifically when likeMcDonald's or whatever started, but it definitely
seems to be a hallmark of thatfifty I believe it was. I could

(27:02):
see the fifties for McDonald's, Yeah, pretty sure that iconography right that.
Yeah, like the image I cansee like old images of it in my
head of like this, you know, very fifty style sort of fast food
thing. And this seemed to belike one of the catalysts for like,
hey, just on your way home, you know, everybody has a car
now and you're living out in thesuburbs, just swing by pick up some
food. And I could see howpizza lends itself to that. In fact,

(27:26):
I would say pizza probably ends upbeing one of the most mobile,
you know, foods for lack ofa better words, just because I think
I think it was the originator ofsort of the home delivery food, or
at least it was in my head. Yeah, I think that might be
the case. I mean, that'skind of what I'm basing on here.
A couple of things happened in thefifties sixties. One of them you're talking
about is that pizza delivery becomes aphenomenon. The other thing is that frozen

(27:51):
pizza, which we mentioned in thecontext of Norway earlier, becomes a thing.
Tombstone Pizza began in nineteen sixty twoand then eighty six. It was
sold to craft Food Foods, soyou know, when Kraft is buying something,
it's well accepted and really widespread,and so frozen pizzas, of course,
are big in the United States,and several large pizza chains also started

(28:14):
in the fifties and the sixties,many of them from the Midwest and Western
States, and many of them werestarted by individuals who were not of Italian
heritage. So this becomes a businessenterprise for people that you know, aren't
reaching back into their own past culturein order to make something traditional. They're
thinking, well, this is apopular item, this is a popular food.
You know, we can make agood business off of that. In

(28:37):
nineteen sixty the brothers Tom and JamesMonaghan established a pizza shop that delivered in
this Plante, Michigan, called Dominis, and in the nineteen seventies they began
to go national and they changed theirname to Dominoes. I was going to
say, once you said Dominicks,I was like, that's got to be
Dominoes. And if it's not,it would have been really funny how it

(28:59):
turned out to be pizza. ButI wouldn't have put money on that.
So the big hook that they hadgoing was pizza delivery, and I think,
as you pointed out, this mightbe where the whole delivery craze in
the United States at least and probablyother places really gets going. And then
the other thing is fast delivery.I mean that was really emphasized pretty strongly
as well. The nineteen eighties sawdramatic growth and Domino's franchises. So in

(29:22):
nineteen seventy seven there were about twohundred of them, and then by eighty
three they were over a thousand,so massive rapid expansion into Canada around that
time as well. And you mightnot remember this, but I'm old enough
to remember that one of their bigadvertising hooks and slogans was thirty minutes or
your pizza is free. Were youpart of that era. I've heard of

(29:47):
this, and I've seen this idearift on you know, sitcoms and like
stand up acts and everything, right, like this is like a common thing
that people sort of pull up.And I've never actually seen this in practice,
And I would never have thought thatit origin. I would have thought
I originated from more of like amom and pop pizza shop somewhere, you
know that was like, okay,you know, we know how to do

(30:08):
this. I would not have assumedthat a national chain that has very little
actual control of what's happening on theground would would allow for something like that.
That's pretty incredible. It fits becausethe car culture of the United States
in the fifties and the sixties startsto expand. We talked about this on
many episodes. We talked about theinterstate highway system and how cars become really

(30:33):
favored by people in the United States. It gets sort of related to freedom,
and so somebody had the idea thatwe can drive these things around and
get people on these new highways andnew roads. We can get people pizza.
There's a reason why it was probablynot a thing at the time that
you were, you know, ableto order pizzas on your own and stuff.
And that's because in the nineteen eightiesthere was a dramatic narrate of accidents

(30:59):
for domino pizzas like this has beenapparently documented that there are people were getting
into accidents because they had to getthe pizzas there as quickly as possible,
and dominoes try to emphasize, wellthat it's making of the pizza, they'll
be fast, but ultimately it's like, all right, you now have twelve
minutes to get this to this place'shouse. Otherwise we could give it to
them for free. I'm ninety ninepercent sure that if a driver didn't make

(31:22):
it within that thirty thirty minute window, there was definitely some who were going
to face repercussions by their managers orowners of the franchise or what have you.
And so, yeah, how canyou how could that not end up
being the case because it's like,well, either this pizza is coming out
of my own pocket, or I'mgoing to run through this red lighter or
whatever, right whatever it is,or I'm gonna speed. Yeah, yeah,

(31:45):
I read somewhere and again I don'tknow if this is true, but
that the death rate of Domino's pizzadelivery workers were like on par with like
coal workers or something like that.The death rate, it was really bad.
And then in eighty nine and three, Dominoes was brought to court by
a couple families who had family membersthat were injured, in one case,

(32:07):
killed by a driver, and Dominoeslost those court cases, and so they
had to back off of their fastdelivery promise and they had to sort of
bank on other things. But Dominoesis famous really for delivery, I think,
more than anything else. Yeah,and this might be a hot take,
but I would stay. I wouldsay of the national chains, I

(32:28):
would say Dominoes is probably still thebest. I'm not a big fan of
Pizza Hut. I hope I'm notscaring off any potential sponsors or Hey,
Dominoes, right, we're right here, Kia Hut's listening. I will say
I have a little bit of saucespot for Pizza Hut because it was the
one place in my town growing upwhere you could go as a as a
teenager, like kind of late likethey were open till past eleven something nice.

(32:52):
So we ended up there just becauseit was open and if we weren't
going to one of the local diners, then we met at Pizza Hut and
I'm sure they loved us, butyeah, that was what was going on.
Dominoes was sold, incidentally, innineteen ninety to Bain Capital for one
billion dollars, so that turned outto be a pretty good business. The

(33:12):
first Pizza Hut since we're talking aboutit, opened in Wichita, Kansas in
nineteen fifty eight, and was subsequentlysold to PepsiCo and Believe in seventy seven
for three hundred million dollars, soI'm sure in nineteen ninety is worth a
lot more. Pizza Hut has expandedinternationally, as has Dominoes, and Pizza
Hutt even expanded into Russia in nineteenninety. Famously, Mikhail Gorbachev was on

(33:35):
an ad for Pizza Hut. However, it didn't really take off in Russia.
Apparently was flighted with the United States. Perhaps I don't know. I
know that pizza's popular in Russia,but not Pizza Hut. You know,
this is interesting because I had heardthat in this maybe there's a future episode
in this at one point, butbecause you said it, Pizza Huad at
this time was sold to Pepsi.That's right. I know. Now it's

(33:57):
part of young brands, which islike KFC I talk about sometimes they're all
paired together or yeah, it's atrifecta of these places. But so I
had heard that Pepsi was the onlylike you know, American brand soda allowed
under the Soviet government. And sowhen that that whole thing collapsed, and
then all of a sudden, CocaCola was there and everything like that,

(34:20):
Coca Cola became much more popular becauseit was more associated with sort of this
new found freedom that's you know,everybody was experiencing at the time. I
don't know if this is true.This is something I've heard or read anecdotally
through articles, right, And I'mwondering if Pizza huts association with Pepsi at
the time could have been made themfeel analogous to sort of that old brand.
I don't I wonder I I Ihad a map at one point that

(34:45):
showed the global dominance of either Cokeand Pepsi and countries around the world,
and there's a very interesting geography toit, and I don't know if it's
changed, but it was very informedby the Cold War and Coca cola you
to be bottled in US military basisthroughout the world, so they would send
the syrup and they would use localwater and they'd bottle it there. So

(35:07):
Coca Cola was seen as so intrinsicallyAmerican, in part because it was tied
to the US military as well.So in some places, Pepsi became much
more popular, like in Russia,initially because it was even though it was
a US company, it wasn't seenas emblematic of the United States as perhaps
Coca Cola was. I got todig that map out. I haven't seen

(35:29):
it for a while. I haveit in an old lecture. But it's
fascinating to think about the geopolitics ofsoda. I mean, that's something interesting.
Yeah, totally also funny because likePepsi's colors are literally I mean it's
red, white, and blue andthere's not even blue. Yeah, that's
exactly right. Yeah, so they'reboth obviously trying to capture that. Let's

(35:50):
all right, so let's really getinto it. We're going to talk about
regional pizza styles in the United States. This is where for some listeners it
could get a little heated, butwe'll do that after a short break.
Great, we will do our lastad break and then we'll hit those regional
pizzas and we're back at Jeff andHunter. We're talking about Geography Is Pizza

(36:16):
and the Geographers Everything podcast, andwe're about to go into regional pizza styles
in the United States. So alot of people from these places are very
connected to it, or if theymove somewhere else in the United States,
they are looking for a slice similarto the slice that they knew in another
part of the country. Jeff,do you have a favorite regional variety?

(36:39):
You know? I don't know ifI have a favorite necessarily, I like
generally, I like all types.I would say I really like the sort
of grab a slice and walk onthe go. I guess I would be
more like New York styles pizza.That's probably what I eat most of However,
I will say that I really appreciatea good cargo style deep dish as

(37:00):
well. I think that to me, they're there. I would argue they
are both pizzas, right, butI would also say that they're they're both
different enough that it's not it's it'snot either or situation pretty similar. So
what are you in the mood for? Yeah, right, exactly. And
then you know there's there's some there'ssome variations, you know, you know,
California has some stuff going on.YEP. I would say, I'm

(37:22):
not as much of a fan ofthat kind of style of pizza or Hawaiian
style. I'm not a I'm nota pineapple. I don't care if people
like pineapple on their pizza. It'sjust not just not for you. That's
good, that's very tolerant to you. I appreciate that we're going to talk
about some of those regions. Andwe're going to start with New York,
okay, because and I think NewYork and Chicago are probably maybe best known,
but there's there's other places as well. Around the turn of the twentieth

(37:44):
century, there was a lot ofurbanization. There was, you know,
the rise of industrialization in Southern Europe, and so a lot of people were
moving to cities and then subsequently movingto other places. So a lot of
immigrants from Southern Europe, including Italy, arriving in New York, you know,
and the nineteen hundreds and many ofthem for Naples, you know,
and other parts of Italy as well, And so New York pizza, I

(38:06):
think is pretty closely related to Neapolitanpizza. It's not the same, but
it's somewhat reminiscent apparently. And ofcourse this is much debated, just like
anything to do with pizza, butthat the first pizza place in New York
and perhaps well known anywhere documented isopen in nineteen oh five in New York
was called Lombardes, and so LombardiLombardi's. It's supposed to be apparently the

(38:30):
first, and it was likely thatpizza was originally sold in street carts and
more informally before this, But thisis a place that sort of takes the
documented crown of the first pizza place, and New York pizza is well known
across the country. You can findNew York style pizza in a lot of
different places. It's maybe the bestknown regional variety. The pies are thin

(38:53):
crust, although not as thin astraditional Neopolitan pizza. They're frequently sold by
this slice. It's usually cut invery large triangular slices, and it's so
large and floppy that sometimes it's easierto fold in half to eat, which
sort of oh yeah, amplifies itsability to be taken on the go.

(39:13):
And this was also made very famousin the opening sequence of Saturday Night Fever
starring John Travolta, where he's walkingwith the paint cans. He's working at
a paintsto spoiler alert. I won'tto say too much about it, but
if you watch the beginning, he'sdoing that and he gets a slice or
maybe it's two, folds it inhalf, and that's sort of setting the
scene for what it's like to bea young Italian person in New York at

(39:35):
this time. The crust is crisp, but it's still chewy, you know's,
and it's made from this high glutenflour. New York pizza is hand
tossed traditionally, so it's not stretchedout on a pan like they preferred that
we do it little Caesars, eventhough we like to hand toss it.
But once you dropped one or killer, they'd be like, listen, you
got it. You're waisting food here. You can't, yeah, just put

(39:58):
it, you can. Unlike traditionalNeapalitan pie, New York pizza sauce usually
has a few spices in it,so it's not totally plain. It's usually
jazzed up with some kind of aregano usually or maybe some basil, and
the mozzarella is aged in low moisture. It's not the fresh mozzarella that's kind
of moist but rather the dryer stuffthat can be shredded onto the pizza or

(40:20):
layered onto it. Also in NewYork you can find Sicilian pizza, which
comes in very thick, chewy,crusted square slices, which is akin to,
but not exactly like, the pizzafrom Sicily. Now, I happened
to be from a town in Connecticutthat had a lot of immigrants from southern
Italy and a lot from Sicily,so thick pizza was a thing there.

(40:43):
I really liked it a lot,you know, that's one of my favorite
kinds of pizza. But there wasalso a place that sold Neapolitan New York
style pizza downtown where I lived,and I love that place. The thin
slice it was delicious. So earlyon I realized that you didn't have to
just choose one kind of pizza.You know. It's it's funny because you
brought up square square cuts of pizzaand I've known people who have had strong

(41:07):
opinions on whether square cut is okayor not, and like, to them
it was not okay, there's noAnd I'm like, it's just a shape,
right, yeah, it's still aslice. I mean a slice doesn't
necessitate being triangular, I don't think. But yeah, some people they're like,
what am I going to I'm notgoing to eat that. It's not
a triangle, right, all right? So let's go into another region here.

(41:30):
Another East Coast city with a verysignificant Italian population is new Haven,
Connecticut. See, I was wonderingwhen new when Connecticut was going to Pizza
has also experienced a pretty big nationalboost of attention in the last five or
ten years, so I think it'sgotten more popular outside of New Haven.

(41:52):
The pizza there is also very closelyassociated with the pizza from Naples, but
New Haven style pizza is sometimes knownas avizza, which is a term that
was developed in New Haven by Italianspeaking in Neopolitan dialect, and so it's
spelled APIs ez a. But it'snot a pizza, it's a beizza.

(42:12):
And so this is we have aplace a pizza shoals, a pizza shoals
here in Portland, which is verygood, by the way, and that's
that's New Haven style pizza. Basically, I did not know, so I'm
also affiliate familiar with a pizza shoalshere in Portland. I did not know.

(42:32):
I don't. I didn't know exactly. I never really thought about where
their name came with that, butI was like, oh, yeah,
it's a pizza. It's yeah,Okay, it's just like they're throwing a
little extra flare on their pricess.It's fine. Yeah, I mean,
I guess it's a little closer tothe way it might be pronounced in Naples,
probably a little bit different, butI think that's where it comes from.
New Haven pizzas a little bit likeNew York pizza. But having said

(42:55):
that out loud, I better immediatelysay and how it's different. New Haven
p pizza dough is fermented longer thanNew York pizza dough and has a thin,
charred crust, and is traditionally bakedvery quickly in extremely hot coal fired
ovens, which, like wood ovens, burn much hotter than ovens powered by
gas or oil, and most ofthe ovens in New York City are now

(43:19):
powered by gas or oil, butmany of them in New Haven are still
coal fired ovens, and so thischar is very distinctive to a beets and
people sometimes think it's burnt and theysort of get bent out of shape,
like this is overdone. But it'snot burnt. It's delightfully charred. You
see. I mean this is thedifference. So you should expect that if
you're getting New Haven style pizza.Yeah. I so is this like one

(43:43):
of those like brick oven pizza oventhings. You kind of see the sort
of dome shape. It's like yeah, okay, yeah, and sometimes there
would burn, but traditionally it wascoal burned because that was a very cheap
and inexpensive source of energy at theearly nineteen hundreds, so that's what they
were using. I'm very much afan of the brick oven style pizza.

(44:05):
I guess that's New Haven style.I mean there are other styles that also
use that, but New Haven isone of them. Let's say, just
because it's a clay oven or brickoven doesn't mean it's necessarily a New Haven
style. I should say, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. One
style of New Haven pizza is calledtomato pie, which has no mozzarella,
but instead a dusting of pecorino romano, so it's a nice sort of like

(44:30):
parmesani kind of cheese, a hardcheese. You'll also find something called tomato
pie, which is a little differentin Philadelphia and Rhode Island as well.
In Rhode Island it's called bakery pie, so it's not exactly the same,
but the feature is it doesn't reallyhave mozzarella on it, which to some
people again would be shocking and disappointing, but this is one of the styles

(44:51):
that's out there. And another staplein New Haven is the traditional tomato and
mozzarella pizza. So the originator ofNew Haven style pizza was a guy named
Frank Pepe who sold pizza from astreet cart before he opened the now famous
Pepees in nineteen twenty five. Andone of Pepe's signature pizzas, which is
now a signature pizza of New Haven, is the white clam pie. So

(45:15):
this has olive oil, oregano,grated cheese, garlic, and fresh briny
clams added on top. Now synonymouswith New Haven pizza is this also with
a with a white sauce instead ofa Yeah, it's called white pizza and
it's basically an olive oil bass,so it doesn't have red sauce, gotcha.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen thisbefore. I'm not a huge fan

(45:37):
of it, right, But I'malso not a big fan of shellfish.
So yeah, if you don't likeshellfish and you're not really down with clams,
this might not be the choice foryou, but it is. It's
actually quite good. In nineteen thirtyeight, he also now famous Sally's Abeats
open and Modern Upbeats, which isalso really well known, was found in

(45:57):
nineteen forty four, and they usean oil fueled brick oven, which is
a little different than some of theother places. But I will say that
if you grow up in Connecticut,you know, And I didn't grow up
in New Haven, but I wasnot that far away from it. There's
a huge raging debate as far asI can remember, whether it's Pepees or
Sallies, and some people go withModern and people tend to have pretty strong

(46:19):
takes on this, like it wasobvious which one you should be picking,
and it's one or the other.I think both Pepees and Salies have now
expanded a little bit, so evenoutside of the state. It became so
famous that they decided to franchise alittle bit. There's another place called Bar
which opened in ninety one. It'sa dance club. I think it's only
twenty one and over that it hassome very well reviewed pizza as well.

(46:43):
Now, I'm just can't be drawninto this debate. However, I've just
like I'm being from Connecticut, Idon't want to alienate fans of any of
these eateries. So I'm just gonnahave to play it on the fence and
say that I love New Haven pizza, It's not the only kind I love.
I love New York pizza as well. If we're in a conversation,
if you hear me in a conversationwith people talking about the best style of

(47:04):
pizza, you'll probably hear me representingfor New Haven and for New York.
So I'd probably be in that camp. Yeah. Place identity, right,
I mean, it's it's it seemslike kind of a joke, but it's
actually very important, and it's it'sno joke, Jeff, I mean,
to me, it's the core ofwhat geography is, right, it is.
It's it's the way that we feelabout places, It's the way we

(47:27):
identify with places. That's I mean, that's the kind of geography you and
I are think very particularly interested in. This is very timely. Two days
ago, which was Wednesday, orMay twenty second, because we're recording on
a Friday, US Representative Rosa deLaurel of Connecticut, so she's one of
the members of the Congress from thedelegation from Connecticut, read a statement into

(47:49):
the Congressional record that declared that NewHaven has the best pizza in the country,
to which the next the New YorkThe headlines in New York newspapers the
next day was one of incredulity.You know, it's like, how can
this possibly be? How anybody claimthat? Can only imagine and then to
go even further claiming that Connecticut isthe pizza state. Yeah, I I

(48:12):
I can't imagine that would go overwell with well one New York. I
can't imagine Chicago is probably pretty prettyhappy about not happy either, Jersey not
happy. I mean, there's probablya lot of places. This is one
of those things where, again,people have such a and we talked a
little bit about this, I thinkon our episode last weekend about the Nile
River. People like to have thewe're the best at this. They like

(48:34):
to assigned to their place this youknow, this idea that it's it's a
you know, we're the greatest atsomething relative pizza, Yeah, right,
And pizza is one of those arctype arguments of well, our pizza is
better than yours? Right, arewe make the best pizza? It's not
authentic unless it's right in New Yorkstyles. So, you know, I

(49:00):
was thinking about how this was kindof an odd play, you know,
and I'm from Connecticut and I've gotthe place identity thing. But it's a
tough argument to make, I thinkprobably, So I was wondering what this
was all about. So I dida little bit more digging, and it
turns out that this I think thisis part of the Connecticut government's effort to
rebrand itself, because Connecticut is notreally famous for much other than New An

(49:27):
pizza and the University of Connecticut basketballteams. I think, yeah, I
mean, you know, from anoutsider's perspective, you know, I'm not
from the East Coast. I'm verymuch situated here on the West coast.
I would say that Connecticut does fallin a little bit of an awkward area
where the major that they sit basicallyat least a large part of it within

(49:50):
the New York City metropolitan area,which is obviously more closely associated with the
state of New York because it hasit right there in the name. And
then there's also like Boston and Massachusetts, which I would say, in terms
of New England holds the dominant culturalprominence. Right, that's generally what people
are going to think, Yeah,I think that your imagination reflects what it

(50:12):
was like growing up there, right, and they don't even And then there's
there's also Rhode Island there, butRhode Island gets to also make the claim
that they're the smallest state, right, And so whenever somebody thinks of like
the size of states or something,they're going to think of Rhode Island because
Rhode Island is the smallest state.And while that might seem, you know,
kind of weird, because nobody typicallywants to be the smallest of something,
it's still is a it's it's almostlike a cultural marker, right,

(50:35):
It's like it's a it's a pinpoint, it's a hook, right. And
I do think Connecticut, you know, again, outside looking in, does
seem to lack that sort of culturalhook that that these other states that surround
it do have. Well, that'sexactly what's going on I think here,
and so they're recognizing that and theywant to make it an appealing place for
people to move to and for companiesto move to and things like that.

(50:57):
So I think this effort to bethe pizzas state. I mean, Connecticut
is the nutmeg state that doesn't resonatevery strong. It's also the Constitution state,
which is confusing because it had thefirst constitution of any state, but
it's not the US Constitution. SoI think they're kind of grasping about for
something a little a little hipper,a little bit more of the times.

(51:21):
And so I think pizza is maybea vehicle for getting people to think about
this place differently, and so weget the conflation of taste and place and
emotion and food tied to place,tied to identity. So I think that's
what's going on here. I mean, it's probably a pretty smart play to
me, to be honest, Iwas certainly getting a reaction like there's no
you know, bad news, right, even if people are criticizing it.

(51:43):
You're in the news and people arelike people are talking about it and so
I think that's what they want.I could probably do an episode on New
Haven pizza, but let's let's moveon an interest of people wanting to learn
about other places in the in thecountry they have pizza, and let's go
to Chicago, because you've mentioned thatit's pizza with a thicker crust, a
chunkier sauce, and different sets ofingredients. The deep dish pizza is baked

(52:07):
in a round pan with sides,so think like a cake pan, a
pan you might use for making cakeinstead of on a completely fat service.
So that causes the some nice caramelizationto sometimes happen on the side there.
It's thick crust, but it's notheavy. It's light. It's buttery and
fla flaky ideally, so it's anice crust. Unlike New York pizza,

(52:30):
it's not as well suited to eatingon the go. Some people use a
knife and fork, which again iswildly controversial in some parts of the country
to use that for eating pizza.But this is a pizza that might lend
itself to that, right. Ithink I've had a Chicago slice where I
was eating it like a slice,but it was a lot more cumbersome.
Yeah, it's not as handheld asa New York slice for it's not as

(52:52):
versatile on the go kind of thing. The style developed in the nineteen forties
as soldiers were coming back from thewars we've talked about before, and apparently
one of the main pioneers in Chicagopizza was actually a Texan named Mike Sewell
who opened Pizzeria Uno in nineteen fortythree with his pal Rick Ricardo. Not
Ricky Ricardo, but Rick Ricardo,who had served in Italy during the war.

(53:16):
And so he was talking about thisthis phenomenon of pizza, and Sewell,
being from Texas, said well,I want to make it much bigger,
you know, because that's I guessa thing in Texas. And so
they they kind of went to theside from the Neapolitan style and started Pizzerio
Uno, which has a thick slice. It's a chain with locations throughout the

(53:38):
world now as well, there issome rumors and some speculation that somebody named
Rudy Malnatti who is rumored to haveactually created maybe that recipe, since none
of those guys were actually chefs.He had a son named Lou and Lou
Malnatti's opened in nineteen seventy one.It's very well known in Chicago. And
I will say this though, andthis is I think maybe to some people,

(54:00):
although I'm assuming very well known topeople in the Chicago area, that
even though nationally Deep Dish pizza isconflated with Chicago, that there's another variety
there called tavern style pizza, whichhas a very thin rolled crust cut into
squares. And this is reportedly verypopular with people who live in Chicago versus

(54:22):
those people who might be visiting thecity and want to get a slice,
they're going to get the Deep Dish. So apparently there's if you're an inside
in Chicago, you know that there'sthe tavern style pizza. You know,
I, as you're talking about theI might get myself in some hot water
here with chicagoan's. Oh boys,as you're talking about this person who from
Texas, you know sort of like, Hey, I want to make this

(54:42):
bigger. I want to bring thisstyle here. It kind of makes me
think like, is this actually Texasstyle pizza? Oh boy? That's there's
some people some people driving just gotan accident. Some people eating just drop
their forks on their plates. Weshould always just been canceled in in Chicago.
I think, I'm this is knownas Chicago style pizza. We're going

(55:06):
to go with that. Let's quicklymove over to another industrial city, and
that's Detroit, because I think alsoDetroit pizza, which I didn't hear tons
about in the past, has kindof made a name for itself. I
know that we've got a place inPortland that advertised itself that way. In
Detroit pizza bates back to the nineteenfifties. It is a very It's a

(55:28):
thick crust, not quite as thickas Chicago style, but thick. It's
kind of focaccia like the crust withlots of tomato sauce. It's rectangular rather
than round because of the deep panthat it's baked in. The dough is
relatively wet, which makes the crustsomewhat airy, and the dough is akin
to Sicilian pizza, which we talkedabout before in the New York context.

(55:51):
Traditionally, you make a pizza inDetroit by adding the toppings first onto the
crust, then the cheese, andthen the sauce. This apparently helps guard
against the crust becoming soggy. Ithink that in many times the toppings are
still put on top because people wantto see what they are. When they've
ordered something, they want to seetheir toppings are there, So that may

(56:13):
have changed in some places. Idon't know how universal that is. The
cheese covers the crust itself, andso when it's baked in this pan,
it crisply caramelizes and it's really fantastic. Commonly, brick cheese from Wisconsin is
used, and brick cheese is adistant softer cousin to cheddar made in Wisconsin,

(56:34):
so there's a particular cheese that's supposedto be associated with it. The
style was originated in nineteen forty sixby August Guerra. He started making pies
in blue steel automotive pans frequently foundin the car factories of Motor City.
So obviously they cleaned it real welland they're like, we can make a
pizza in this, and it makessense. That's cool. Yeah, that's

(56:55):
very cool. Don't know why that'sso cool, but it's very cool.
I don't know, it's just likevery such. Wow, yeah, like
what do we carry? We gotthese pants? Well, let's make a
pizza. In it. He eventuallyopened Buddies Pizza and subsequently Cloverfield Pizza in
nineteen fifty three. And then youhave another place, Louise, that was
started by a former employee of Buddies. And I guess these are some of

(57:17):
the I don't know if they're themain places that people in Chicago and Detroit
go, but they are they're wellknown. And then I also have to
give a small shout out here toLittle Caesars, which also began in Detroit.
And I'm not sure this can tobe one hundred percent actually could be
considered Detroit style, but I guesswhen I was working at Little Caesar's,
I didn't identify as making Detroit stylepizza, so maybe I was just under

(57:38):
informed. You know, it's kindof hard for any of the chains.
Really, it's kind of hard toassign a style to them because to me,
they're like they're all just kind ofthey're just it's just fast food pizza
trying to be that's almost its own. It's trying to be reversal, yeah,
trying to be universal. They're justtrying to yeah, make make make
the you know, a product that'syou know, cheap and easy to make

(58:00):
and is profitable and people want tobuy highly standardized Yeah, yep, and
maybe maybe similar to some of thecompetitors as well. Maybe that's part of
it. All right, let's gointo another one here, and after this
we'll go through a little more quickly, but we'll spend a couple of minutes
talking about California pizza. California pizza. California pizza very familiar with it well,

(58:21):
being from really the heart of Californiapizza yourself originally, which is southern
California, although Northern California plays arole as well. This has became a
discernible phenomenon in the early nineteen eighties. I think that California pizza is less
strictly defined than other regional variations andhas more to do with ingredients, sometimes
seasonal ones, many of which werenot previously associated with pizza, So like

(58:45):
maybe arugola or something like that,which you know, you maybe think of
this as a salad green, butlet's put it on pizza. California pizza
tends to have kind of a thinnercrust because it seeks to highlight the toppings
that are on top of it.It's easier to do with this in her
crest. Apparently there are three chefsthat are often named as being instrumental in

(59:05):
this trend of California pizza, EdLaDou, Wolfgang Puck, and Alice Waters.
Alice Waters, I think is avery famous chef, founded the well
known restaurant in Berkeley called Chepanice,and she began using ingredients like leeks and
duck confeete that should be using andother things, and she started using it
on pizza and that became really popular. Ed LaDue made pizza with ingredients such

(59:29):
as rocatta and pate in San Francisco, and then he was recruited by Wolfgang
Puck to work at his West Hollywoodrestaurant Spago, which opened in nineteen eighty
two and currently has locations in BeverlyHills in Las Vegas. And at Spago,
they developed a pizza topped with smokedsalmon, caviar and crem fresh,
which I think is still a signaturepie for this restaurant. LaDue then went

(59:52):
on to develop the menu at CaliforniaPizza Kitchen, that chain which began in
the eighties maybe what you're referring to, and they have dishes such as taied
chicken, pizza, which I thinkhas become a big seller for them.
Yeah, we used to call itthe CPK go to CPK. Okay.
See again, growing up where Igrew up in a different pizza realm,

(01:00:15):
this wasn't I didn't even know aboutthis, maybe until I moved to California
in the nineties or something. Iwas never a big fan of California pizza
chicken or pizza kitchen. I justyeah, I mean it was fine.
It was I wouldn't say yeah,I wouldn't say it was like that good,
and I wasn't. Again, likemaybe I'm more of a traditionalist when
it comes to pizza, but I'mlike I just kind of want, like,

(01:00:37):
you know, some some cheese andmaybe some like I don't know,
olives and mushrooms or something like that. Like I'm very basic. Yeah yeah,
no, I get that the Thaichicken is not I'm not interested in
little hikon my pizza. Yeah yeah, little hike concept. Yeah, many
other steps of course, continues todevelop California pizza and particularly in the Los
Angeles area. So we've got alittle bit of time left. So let's

(01:01:00):
go into the lightning round and we'llwe're going to hit some different ones,
and I don't know if you knowof these or other people do, but
let's go for it. Buffalo Buffalopizza. This pizza has a chewy crust
with the profile in between New Yorkand New Haven style pizza and that of
the thick crust of Chicago or Detroit. It's got small rounds of pepperoni topping
that curl up and pool a littleoil in there, and they get charred

(01:01:23):
during baking. So that's apparently asignature of Buffalo style pizza. There's Saint
Louis Pizza. Saint Louis pizza typicallyhas a thick cracker like crust made from
unlove and dough. Maybe it's athin cracker like crust, and it is
topped with something called provo, whichis a white processed cheese mixing cheddar,
Swiss and provolone. It's very gooey, has a low melting point, and

(01:01:47):
it was explicitly innovated apparently four pizzamaking in Saint Louis, and the consistency
of this cheese goes particularly well withthis thin crisp crust that has are There's
something called Colorado pizza. Do youknow about this this is Rocky Mountain pie.
Is this a thing? I mean, I know what Rocky Mountain oysters
are. This is the same.This is Rocky Mountain and not Rocky Mountain

(01:02:12):
high, which would be the JohnDenver song, but Rocky Mountain Pie,
which has wide rolled crusts to corralthe toppings we talked about. We should
probably revisit, just briefly, theHawaiian pizza, which has a whole history
all to itself, slices of pineappleand ham or Canadian bacon on top.
I feel like this might be oneof the most controversial regional variants of all.
People seem to be pretty firmly forwardor against it. I don't know

(01:02:37):
if there's a lot of people whoare dwelling in the like in the middle
on that one, but I'm surethose people are out there too. Jeff,
you know where Altuna is? Soundslike it's some from someplace in New
York. I don't know. It'sin Pennsylvania. Altuna, Pennsylvania. And
from Altuna, Pennsylvania we get athick crust pizza with Slami, green bell
peppers and American cheese, which datesback to the sixth seventies. This kind

(01:03:00):
of sounds like if you go intolet's say you go into their frozen pizza
section, there's there's always the Supreme, right right, okay, and the
Supreme has basically like well, Ithink it has some sort of sausage on.
It has green bell peppers, andI think it's American cheese as well,
So maybe this is where that comesfrom. Apparently this dates back to
the sixties or seventies when it servedexclusively at the Altuna Hotel until a fire

(01:03:22):
forced its closure in twenty thirteen,and then suddenly other local restaurants started making
it and it became even more ofa discernible thing. I mean, I
dated somebody from Altuona in the nineties, wonderful person, but we never had
the Altuna pizza conversation, so Idon't know. You think it would come
up in conversation, but it neverdid. Yeah, there's Quad Cities Pizza,

(01:03:44):
and if you're not familiar with theQuad Cities, they are Davenport and
Bettendorf, Iowa, and Rock Islandand Molly in Illinois on the Mississippi River.
It's a thin cross made a littlenutty through the extra malt that's added
into the dough the mall extract.It features a spicy sauce, fennel sausage,
lots of mozzarella, and it's cutinto strips. So it's not squares,

(01:04:05):
it's not triangles, it's strips.Interesting, Okay, I'm not opposed
to that. It seems like Ithink that might be fun reasonable to eat
something like that, and then fordipping if you're a dipper, you know.
And then finally, if you're inMiami, you might find some Cuban
style pizza associated with the chain.Ray Pizza has a thick doe crusp,

(01:04:26):
minimal sauce, and various toppings,and then a mix of mozzarella and Gouda
cheeses on top. So oh yeah. What I suspect is that if we
were to look at countries throughout theworld, we would find something similar.
We'd find regional variations of pizzas thatdiffer from city to city or region to
region. But that's going to haveto be for another day. Yeah,
I mean, there's such a deephistory of pizzas just within the United States

(01:04:53):
that this could have, Like,I mean, we didn't even just talk
about the United States here. Wedid a large part of it, but
like we could have easily just donethe United States pizza. That's right,
that's I mean, I know Japanhas a bunch of like interesting vary variations
going on. There are a lotof countries that have embraced pizza because of
how practical it is and how muchpeople love it. Absolutely. Yeah,

(01:05:15):
well this was a really fun episode, Hunter. I really loved learning all
about pizza. This makes me wantto start thinking about like what's our next
food, right, because yeah,you know, I don't have one off
the top of my head, butthere's got to be another one. Because
sushi was really fun. Now nowpizza was really fun, so we got
to think of that. Let's goahead and well, tell us who you
are and where we can find you. Thanks, Jeff. I'm Hunter Showby.
I'm a professor of geography at PortlandState University. I'm co author of

(01:05:40):
Portland ISS, a Cultural atlass andUpper Left Cities, a Cultural Atlas of
San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. And I'm co host with you,
Jeff, of this podcast Geography IsEverything. Yeah, and my name is
Jeff Gibson. I do other geographythings online. You can find me mostly
on YouTube over at Geography by Jeff. Go ahead and search on Google.

(01:06:00):
I'm sure you'll find it. Ifyou liked what you listened to today,
you really had fun sort of learningall about pizza, the history and sort
of the geographic dispersion of it.Go over to podcasts or Spotify, Apple
Podcasts, whatever app you use andrate and review us. We really appreciate
seeing those and it's really fun sortof seeing those reviews come in. If
you want this delivered straight to youremail, you can. It's just over
at Geography is Everything dot substack dotcom. Totally free. You don't have

(01:06:24):
to pay anything. I know substackhas a paid option. We don't do
that. It's really just another wayfor you to get access to this.
Next week, Hunter, we aregoing to turn our attention back to transportation
excellent, and this is something thatwe've we've touched on a little bit here.
In fact, we had a wholeepisode all about high speed rail right
which was a lot of fun.People can go back and listen to that.

(01:06:45):
Now we're going to turn our attentionto just trains and gens specific slow
trains, all trains. Yes,yeah, well, and it's it's gonna
be fun. I think it's one. It's gonna be a lot more international
than our pizza episode. I'm sortof re redoing sort of how I was
originally thinking of it, where we'reactually going to look at how different train
systems work and are managed around theworld and sort of what they do,

(01:07:06):
right, I mean, what we'regoing to find is that, Yeah,
what we're going to find is thatthere's there's differences in how the United States
uses trains versus China, versus Europeversus you know, all these other places,
right, and that feeds into sortof the geographic sort of aspect of
trains at large. We're also goingto talk about some of the longest train

(01:07:28):
routes, which I think will surprisesome people because I know there's one very
famous one that often gets touted asthe longest train route, but it's not
actually the longest train route. Soyou'll have to come back next week to
learn all about that though, soI guess until then, well, we
will see you next time. Thanksfor listening.