[From Homepage] In Defense of Deep Dish: Ending the Debate Over What Defines Pizza

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By Daniel Zemans (MarlaCollins'Husband)

[caption id="attachment_2184" align="aligncenter" width="600"] A bona-fide Chicago-style deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati's[/caption]



“They [Italians] would go to Chicago and they would kill themselves if they saw what was going on over there…It has nothing to do with pizza.” – Mario Batali

“It’s very tasty, but it’s not pizza.” – Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

"Let me explain something: Deep dish pizza is not only not better than New York pizza, it's not pizza. It's a f***ing casserole!" – Jon Stewart (spoken while using a picture of a stuffed pizza – not deep dish – as a visual aid)

There’s not actually a serious debate in this country as to whether deep dish pizza counts as pizza. It’s been called pizza since its invention in 1943; it's universally referred to as pizza and it shares a flavor profile with every other style of tomato sauce-topped pizza. That said, the dissent seems to be increasing. It could just be that New Yorkers are getting even more vocal; it could be part of the move away from traditional red-sauced Italian-American food to more “authentic” Italian options; it could be that more willfully ignorant food writers are craving attention; or it could just be that Jon Stewart really does have that much sway over public discourse. Whatever the reason, now seems like a good time to make clear that the argument that deep dish pizza is not pizza flies in the face of pizza history, linguistics, and common sense. That’s the nicest way I can say that the argument that deep dish pizza is a casserole is complete and utter bullsh*t.

Nice article.

I think some of the rancor around deep dish probably comes from the single-serve variety served at airports, ballparks and other locations: too sweet a sauce, too doughy a crust, and inferior toppings (mealy sausage and greasy pepperoni), designed to be manufactured, frozen, and optimized for the serving, not dining experience.

I still occasionally enjoy a slice of stuffed (although its not something I crave like I did when I was younger, and I swear it's not because I'm now more aware of what I'm cramming into my aorta), but I like all the varieties of Chicago Deep Dish, ranging from the heritage of Uno's to Malnati's to Pizano's; the Gino's East variant; to the Gulliver's/Burt's/Pequod's rich focaccia-like cheese-charred crust.

Great post Joel. People eat the crap pizza at Uno Chicago Grill or some frozen Connie's and assume it's the real deal.

I like all of the varieties of deep dish Malnati/Due/Uno, Gino's East, Pequod's/Burt's, though Malnati's with buttercrust is my favorite.

For me, stuffed is clearly inferior and a pizza I never crave. Art of Pizza was probably the best stuffed I've had.

Great article!
I also don't dig stuffed pizza - I guess I just don't "get" it.
Deep dish however reminds me enough of the thick pizza my Sicilian grandfather (and my father after him) would make every Sunday in large rectangular sheets that it just smacks of home to me.

I could be mistaken, Daniel, but wasn't calling Chicago deep dish pizza a "casserole" first started by your old boss at Serious Eats, Ed Levine, in his 2005 book "Pizza: A Slice of New York" when he claimed that it was "a good casserole at best"? Enjoyable article. Thanks.

Really nice article. Thanks for writing and posting it.

When pizza partisans say "that's not pizza," I hear it as "that's not my idea of pizza," and I chalk it up to the Pizza Cognition Theory. Personally, I've hardly ever met a pizza I didn't like, and I consider people who insist on being rigid in their thinking of what qualifies as pizza the poorer for it.

Anthony Bourdain has also referred to Chicago deep dish as a casserole. Despite his admiration of both Burt's (cf. the Chicago episode of "No Reservations") and the City of Chicago in general, in "The Layover" he rhetorically asked "How can a place where so many things are great be most famous for something that sucks [i.e. deep dish pizza]?"

Also, in his tome "Pizza: A Slice of Heaven", Ed Levine effuses about Detroit-style pizza which is no more "authentic" than Chicago deep dish.

In the 80's, there was a comic book called "American Flagg!" (Published in Evanston and set in a future Chicago), that called Chicago-style pizza "macho quiche." The were several issues where recipes appeared on the keys page, including "pizza rustica" which led to a joke later where the main character took the alias "Pete Zarustica."

ld111134 wrote:Also, in his tome "Pizza: A Slice of Heaven", Ed Levine effuses about Detroit-style pizza which is no more "authentic" than Chicago deep dish.

Man, I love me some Detroit-style pizza. Reminds me of a square version of Burt's/Pequod's. I don't know if Burt got his inspiration directly from Detroit (especially the crispy cheese crust edges, similar to Buddy's in Detroit), but they are definitely on the same continuum.

I personally don't understand this authenticity crap. It's not like Italians don't have thick-style pizzas. Like the article mentions, look at Easter Pie, or just look at something like pizza al taglio or pizza rustica. How does deep dish pizza or stuffed pizza not fit into this tradition? Madness.

It's come up before, but the oldest continuous claim to pizza in Chicago is probably Pompeii, which has been on Taylor Street for over 100 years. Presently, Pompeii's web site notes the business started as a bakery that featured pizza in 1909.

Italian bakeries did and do make pizza. I wouldn't be surprised if the venerable Ferrara, farther west on Taylor (the bakery started by the same Ferrara family that makes Lemon Heads), made pizza way back when it opened in 1908, as it does today.

For some odd reason, Taylor Street doesn't much exist on LTH, despite great work from Antonius earlier this century. But the pizza history is there in Chicago.

PIGMON wrote:I could be mistaken, Daniel, but wasn't calling Chicago deep dish pizza a "casserole" first started by your old boss at Serious Eats, Ed Levine, in his 2005 book "Pizza: A Slice of New York" when he claimed that it was "a good casserole at best"? Enjoyable article. Thanks.

It's certainly possible but without proof I'd hate to blame him. That said, I have no doubt that he is most responsible for popularizing the concept. Well, at least until Jon Stewart's rant.

JeffB wrote:It's come up before, but the oldest continuous claim to pizza in Chicago is probably Pompeii, which has been on Taylor Street for over 100 years. Presently, Pompeii's web site notes the business started as a bakery that featured pizza in 1909.

The chances are there were a number of bakeries selling pizza in Little Italy and other Italian neighborhoods around Chicago as early as the late 19th century, but I haven't come across any solid evidence. I hadn't looked at the Pompeii website for a while, but I don't think that claim used to be there. It's certainly possible it's accurate. It's a claim that was also made in a book (actually more a photo essay - 200 pictures in 128 pages) called Chicago Italians at Work, but no source is cited. Given the growth in food studies, it's only a matter of time before someone fluent in Italian takes the time to scour primary sources from that time period and find references to pizza that will fill in the current gaps.

"Since 1909" or similar has been on Pompeii's signage and menus as long as I can recall. About 20 years. It's a continuously operated, local family business, so I'd assume the claim is accurate unless there's something to demonstrate otherwise. The name obviously suggests Napolitano origins, so it seems rather likely pizza was in the offing for local, just off the boat paisani at the turn of the century. Just noting the point relevant to the history stuff. No reason to think the immigrants here did without pizza when those in NY and New Haven had it. That would be akin to a new Mexican community without tacos. Not that you suggested it. But some folks in other towns might have.

Beautiful piece, Dan, that addresses not only the food item itself but the larger issue of why some feel the need to put down a dish because it's supposedly not authentic or the alleged "real" thing.

I was amused by the opening Batali quote: “They [Italians] would go to Chicago and they would kill themselves if they saw what was going on over there…It has nothing to do with pizza.”

On Eataly's opening day, the Jon Stewart brouhaha had just broke, so I asked Batali what he thought of the Chicago pizza controversy and, now having his store in Chicago, his opinion was somewhat dialed down: "If it gets people to talk about pizza, it's great."

Lidia Bastianich was somewhat more forthright and gracious on the topic: ""I like Chicago deep-dish. It feels good in the mouth. We have something very similar in Sicily: sfincione."

The beauty of pizza as a food category is that a 5-year-old can tell you how to make it. A starchy substrate covered in sauce and cheese. It can be a bagel, a pita, French bread or any kind of dough you can concoct. Arguing over what's "authentic" is beside the point. Pizza has countless interpretations by region (both in Italian origins as well as US locality). And there's pretty much something good in all of them. My elementary school pizza memories came from what the cook created at school (something not too far removed from Sicilian - sort of a Rocky Rococo's) as well as the neighborhood pizza joint with the square-cut thin crust. As I entered high school, Uno's/Due's and Malnati's won me over. Camping in Wisconsin in the summer introduced me to Tombstone, cooked in a toaster oven in one of many taverns we visited. Eventually Giordano's stuffed was great for poker nights with the guys. I later discovered NY Style and ultimately Neapolitan (as well as the upside-down at Chicago Pizza & Oven Grinder).

And they're all great.

spinynorman99 wrote:The beauty of pizza as a food category is that a 5-year-old can tell you how to make it. A starchy substrate covered in sauce and cheese. It can be a bagel, a pita, French bread or any kind of dough you can concoct.

And they're all great.

I respect the sentiment, but I wonder how far you can push a word before it has no meaning. If starch + sauce + cheese = pizza, it doesn't take much imagination to stretch that definition to meaninglessness.

If I take a biscuit, cover it in red eye gravy and sprinkled cheddar over the top, is it pizza?

If I take a latke, lightly smear it with mustard sauce, and melt some blue cheese over the top (which actually doesn't sound too bad), do I have a pizza?

How about a cheese sandwich with mayo?

We're after a definition here (as the title suggests), and the challenge is to come up with a definition that's broad enough to contain all legitimate efforts but narrow enough to have meaning.

David Hammond wrote:If starch + sauce + cheese = pizza, it doesn't take much imagination to stretch that definition to meaninglessness.

And you don't even need sauce or cheese for it to be a pizza. See classic pizzas such as pizza marinara (no cheese), or potato pizza (no sauce).

David Hammond wrote:

spinynorman99 wrote:The beauty of pizza as a food category is that a 5-year-old can tell you how to make it. A starchy substrate covered in sauce and cheese. It can be a bagel, a pita, French bread or any kind of dough you can concoct.

And they're all great.

I respect the sentiment, but I wonder how far you can push a word before it has no meaning. If starch + sauce + cheese = pizza, it doesn't take much imagination to stretch that definition to meaninglessness.

If I take a biscuit, cover it in red eye gravy and sprinkled cheddar over the top, is it pizza?

If I take a latke, lightly smear it with mustard sauce, and melt some blue cheese over the top (which actually doesn't sound too bad), do I have a pizza?

How about a cheese sandwich with mayo?

We're after a definition here (as the title suggests), and the challenge is to come up with a definition that's broad enough to contain all legitimate efforts but narrow enough to have meaning.

You can render it meaningless just as salisbury steak renders steak meaningless or meatless meatloaf makes that an oxymoron. My point is that pizza is so ubiquitous and ingrained that a 5-year-old can make their own even if it's ketchup on a slice of bread topped with cheese.

The art is in the interpretation.

I've had Mexican food in eastern Europe prepared by people who'd never been to Mexico and had no access to essential ingredients. That was more farce than food. But I also had some spectacular wood-fired pizza on that same trip. Pizza is universal even if the interpretations vary greatly.

And as an elderly gentleman pointed out to me once on a trip to New York, "pizza's like sex; even when it's bad, it's good."

spinynorman99 wrote:
And as an elderly gentleman pointed out to me once on a trip to New York, "pizza's like sex; even when it's bad, it's good."

You've obviously never ordered from Domino's.

I think the reason why stuffed-pizza-as-pizza is any topic at all is because people can engage their seemingly instinctual drive to hate the other without the guilt or shame that comes along with bonafide bigotry. It makes it easy to have rivalry without feelings really being hurt (or worse). Jon Stewart et al. get to have a laugh at Chicago's expense and inflate their New Yorkers' superiority complex to even greater extremes. Chicago deep-dishers get to retort with huff and puff but without feeling like they're about to start a fist fight with someone on the street. And all the while, everyone gets to throw their opinion into the ante. And basically, everyone wins. Except me - I disdain New York snobbery as much as I'm disappointed by Chicago deep dish pizza. I'll take Coalfire, Spacca Napoli or Dante's over Lou Malnati's, Uno or Giordano's any day of the week.

spinynorman99 wrote:The art is in the interpretation.

I get that, but I don't find the equation "starch + sauce + cheese = pizza to be satisfying." By that definition, a plate of pasta with sauce and parm would qualify. Slight improvement might be "baked starch + sauce + cheese = pizza (usually)"

That said, if I had an 18-year-old's metabolism, I'd eat a lot more deep dish.

stevez wrote:

spinynorman99 wrote:
And as an elderly gentleman pointed out to me once on a trip to New York, "pizza's like sex; even when it's bad, it's good."

You've obviously never ordered from Domino's.

Nor from Little Clown. Although that's a different tangent.

In Spring '51 my dad got recalled to the USAF, and in July we moved from Ft. Collinss into a bungalow on the corner of 71st and Princeton. Within a month, my mom, who was a food pioneer, dragged us into a little Italian place at the (then) intersection of State and Vincennes. (Maybe hard to believe today, but then this was a genuine adventure for a non-Italian neighborhood family.) I can *still* strongly remember being nearly gagged at the reek of parmesan in the place. But the owners were friendly, and they made us a pizza. It wasn't my mom's spaghetti, but I liked it pretty damn well, and we returned many times. I was eight.

So that's how things were on the South Side back in the day.

Geo

garcho wrote:I think the reason why stuffed-pizza-as-pizza is any topic at all is because people can engage their seemingly instinctual drive to hate the other without the guilt or shame that comes along with bonafide bigotry. It makes it easy to have rivalry without feelings really being hurt (or worse). Jon Stewart et al. get to have a laugh at Chicago's expense and inflate their New Yorkers' superiority complex to even greater extremes. Chicago deep-dishers get to retort with huff and puff but without feeling like they're about to start a fist fight with someone on the street. And all the while, everyone gets to throw their opinion into the ante. And basically, everyone wins.

I agree, and I think this is obviously a big component of the never-ending pizza wars: New York--Chicago rivalry, and it's more about New Yorkers needing to reassure themselves of their city's superiority, as Chicagoans are already largely resigned to their "Second City" status.

I still remember an article I read decades ago on the subject of which city was the "real" capital of the US, New York or Washington, DC, which consisted of a point-by-point put-down of the latter. It read like a class bully pummeling the geeky kid with glasses.

I am all for cheering for your favorite teams and "be true to your school," but tribalism turns me off when it turns negative, i.e., when it's manifested as contempt for other people's favorites. No example seems more pointless to me than White Sox fans hating Cubs fans and vice versa --- unless it's hating the way people like their pizza in a place 800 miles away from you.

Not that I expect the pizza wars to ever end. It makes good fodder on the Food Network and on tv shows and in magazines in both cities, and as you say, garcho, it seems to gratify an innate human impulse.

I am an East Coast native who married a Wisconsinite. I grew up loving big, floppy, foldable slices with a healthy perimeter crust and she grew up on Rocky Roccoco's crispy thin crust cut into squares with no crust on the edges. I've learned to adapt and compromise: We alternate pizza from Piece, Santullo's or Coalfire with pies form Pizano's or D'Agostino's. She's no fan of deep dish however, although she liked Bert's when we went there a couple of years ago.

You have to be small-"c" catholic in your tastes to truly appreciate all of Chicago's pizza offerings.

ld111134 wrote:You have to be small-"c" catholic in your tastes to truly appreciate all of Chicago's pizza offerings.

huunnh?



.

Small-c catholic, adjective: (especially of a person's tastes) including a wide variety of things, all-embracing.
synonyms: universal, diverse, diversified, wide, broad, broad-based, eclectic, liberal, latitudinarian[/b]
antonyms: narrow

Learn something new every day.

I'm Catholic and have never heard the term used in that context, in my experience it usually denotes someone who is while self identifying as Catholic is not a strict adherent to all the rules therin (no meat on Friday, etc.).

If I be not mistook zoid, the small "c" catholic, meaning "universal" , came first. The Church absorbed that meaning.

Geo

Once again I learn something new - twice in the same day!

zoid I'm looking for the damn "like" button
but can't find it!

Geo