The Sundarban
New York City has more pizzerias with more diversity than any other city in The US. Meanwhile, Chicago has its contain deep-dish style that no New York pizza spot has been in a deny to successfully replicate. Chicagoans may per chance additionally be as ecstatic with their deep-dish favorites savor Lou Malnati’s and Gino’s East as New Yorkers are of their favorite neighborhood joints, from New Park Pizza in Queens to L & B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn.
Nevertheless, mountainous pizza made with excessive-quality ingredients isn’t very any longer completely found in the mountainous U.S. cities the build Southern Italians migrated starting in the late 1800s. Listed below are seven pizza spots now not in New York or Chicago that are worth the force.
(The story behind Chicago deep dish pizza)
Dough Pizzeria Napoletana (San Antonio, Texas)
San Antonio will possible be most neatly-known for Tex-Mex, nonetheless the Alamo City may per chance lay affirm to having a pair of of the best pizza in the Lone Star Sing. Essentially based in 2007, Dough now has two locations: one conclude to the airport and another downtown. 12-inch pies come out in 90 seconds, and the pizza menu is shatter up between Neapolitan and American, with the latter outnumbering the former by 7 to 3.
As right here’s Texas, seek information from a selection of meat on the American pies (pork in particular). On the Neapolitan menu, the long-established Margherita is a stand out. The fior di latte is made day by day and likewise serves as the outer layer for the equally in style signature burrata, which comes with a side of the same dough as the pizza.
Frank Pepe’s white clam pizza is worth ordering.
Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (New Haven, Connecticut)
Frank Pepe distinguished 100 years in 2025, making it Connecticut’s oldest pizzeria. New Haven-style pizza is in a class of its contain. The thin crust is denser total, and the outer edge is now not as puffy. “Locals savor their pies charred, nonetheless now not so unparalleled so that the crust turns into inedible, bitter and carbonized,” says Colin Caplan, a New Haven native and pizza tour information.
Frank Pepe invented the clam pie in the mid-20th century, which is a rite of passage when visiting Connecticut. The original tomato pie dates encourage to the first menu, which had glorious two alternate choices. The tomato pie is more akin to the Neapolitan cosacca (with Pecorino Romano in build of Parmigiano Reggiano). With that acknowledged, it is best to steal a watch at both the white clam pizza and original tomato pie, whereas also saving some room for the Margherita.
(Where to find the best pizza and boulevard food in Naples)
Guantonios Wood Fired (Lodi, California)
Some of the best tomatoes in the United States come from Modesto, California. Guantonio’s is in the dinky city of Lodi, which, savor Modesto, is fragment of California’s Central Valley. As a quarter of The US’s food comes from this location, it stands to intention that the pizza right here desires to be as precise as any in the United States. Cans of Alta Cucina tomatoes are considered in front of the dinky rental the build the dozen a selection of 14-inch pies are made. The traditional is preferable to the cheese pie, as the former leaves more room for the sauce to assassinate its thing with your taste buds. Of the white pies, cacio e pepe is supreme for these that love unlit pepper. However the biancoverde is a more interesting distinction, as each and each cut has its contain neatly off creamy dollop of burrata, which goes on frigid after the pie comes out of the oven.
Mission Pizza Napoletana (Winston-Salem, North Carolina)
James Beard-nominated chef and proprietor Peyton Smith has a strict rule: Only he touches the wood-fired pizza oven. The native Carolinian’s version of a Margherita makes use of the softer bufala mozzarella rather than the less assailable long-established fior di latte. Meanwhile, the cosacca, which predates the Margherita by decades, lets the sauce shine with out omitting cheese fully. The thin slices of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese atop soften into the pie, offering a salty balance to the cramped sweetness of the entire grape tomatoes and sauce.
There’s also the pizzakase, the build each and each individual at the counter gets a cut of the pie(s), that are inclined to alternate between red and white, with intermittent dinky plates and dessert bites served in between. Both the pizzakase and the long-established menu are subject to alternate from one week to the subsequent.
PARM (Oshkosh, Wisconsin)
The US’s Dairyland pizza is worth traveling for, especially in case you may neatly be heading to PARM. Founder and pizzaiolo Andy Saray makes use of as many native ingredients as that you may think of. Dough and mozzarella are made day by day in-rental, and the point of interest is now not completely on red-sauce pies. The eight wood-fired pies accept as true with a agency, but chewy outer crust. Andy prefers the pear and burrata. And whereas that is a a selection of desire, the fundamental individual of the explain right here is the pesto and pistachio, which found its skill onto the PARM menu as a tribute to Chris Bianco. The citrusy taste of the lemon combined with the crunchy pistachio and milky mozzarella works savor a charm.
Chris Bianco’s tomatoes are former in his signature pizza sauce at Pizzeria Bianco.
Ash Ponders, The New York Times thru Redux
Pizzeria Bianco (Phoenix and Los Angeles)
It’d be a precise understatement to utter that put up-2000, many of the most respected pizzaioli in The US (including some on this checklist) drew inspiration from Chris Bianco. The James Beard Award-winning chef, cookbook author, and New York native opened his namesake pizzeria in Phoenix in the mid-Nineteen Nineties and has since expanded to Los Angeles.
This destination pizzeria has a dinky wood-fired pizza menu of three reds and three whites. On the Margherita, the sauce stands out the most. The sauce atop the mute, chewy crust has a natural sweetness of California tomatoes coupled with the mozzarella that Bianco has been making since the Nineteen Eighties. However it’s the marinara that he counts as one in every of his two private favorites.
Pizzeria Vetri (Philadelphia)
Pizzeria Vetri started in Logan Sq.,
