“Pizza is a lot like sex. When it’s good, it’s really good. When it’s bad? It’s still pretty good. And when it’s God awful, you find you can’t stop screaming, and it takes years for the nightmares to finally stop.”
~You
Previously, we showed you the five best regional pizza styles in America, with a hidden agenda of angering New Yorkers. Today, we’re looking at the dark underbelly of pizza. Because, as great as America is at making pizza, not everyone can get it right. Hell, Brazil makes and eats 1.4 million pizzas every day, but even with all that practice they still do shit like put chocolate on it. So as great as pizza is, it’s not always a winner. The best pizzas? Are glorious.
These pizzas? Are terrifying.
The Five Worst Regional Pizzas In America
California-Style Pizza
When talking about California, it’s hard to separate the numerous demographics in our nation’s largest state. San Francisco has about as much in common with Los Angeles as Amsterdam does with Singapore. But if there’s one thing that’s generally assumed about the state, it’s that if you’re not talking about hamburgers, it’s best not to leave the state to their own devices when trying to make junk food.
As we mentioned in our article about actually GOOD pizzas, in 1980 the East Coast discovered that you could put a pizza on a grill. That same year, on the opposite side of the nation, a chef working for an Austrian-run chain of restaurants and a few chefs working at a Berkeley restaurant decided that pizza doesn’t have to be pizza.
California style pizzas are prepared on a thin crust, but the crust itself doesn’t matter as much as the ingredients, which tend to be nontraditional and heavily focused on fresh produce. Here’s a bit of a pro-tip when it comes to pizza—crust matters.
The consistency, flavor, and dexterity of a crust is all you need to differentiate a New York-style pizza pie with New Haven, Chicago thin crust, or a goddamn DiGorno’s. If you can’t describe your crust with any more detail than, “I don’t know, uh, Italian-style?” you’re doing pizza wrong. California-style pizza focuses on toppings, but instead of tomato sauce, cheese, sausage, and heartburn, you’re left with honey, soy sauce, peanuts, and the undying hatred towards whoever asked you for a slice of pizza.
When you were first introduced to California pizza…well, you were probably in high school, and your friends thought that CPK was a classy way to spend a lunch. It didn’t really occur to you that the only pizzas on the menu were either strange combinations of ingredients with the name “Spicy Chipotle Chicken” or just normal pizzas that look disgusting.
Does a California Club with bacon, chicken, lettuce, and mayonnaise sound good to you? It does, right? Now, how about taking all that shit, placing it on a pizza crust, and tossing it in the oven. Not so great, right? We didn’t think so. Of course these pizzas (mostly) at least have cheese, unlike…
Tomato Pies
Tomato pie is a type of pizza that’s been around America almost as long as regular pizza, as it’s been available since at least 1914. The difference between pizza and tomato pie largely stems from the fact that pizza is warm, delicious, and makes you forget your troubles, while tomato pie is lukewarm, without cheese, and hands you a bottle of pills while whispering, “Go ahead, do it, no one will miss you.”
Tomato pie takes a thick, focaccia-like dough, covers it in tomato sauce, and then sprinkles enough grated romano cheese to make you say “huh, I guess there’s a little bit of cheese on this thing. Maybe.” Once it’s cooked, it’s not immediately served, as tomato pie is supposed to be served at room temperature, making tomato pies equal parts “salmonella risk” and “the worst thing to serve to your twelve-year old daughter as you talk to her about her changing body.” This style typically can be found in New Jersey, Utica, Pennsylvania, and other cities where people occasionally walk into pizza restaurants and leave disappointed.
Listen, pizza only has three main ingredients—bread, cheese, and tomato. At the end of the day, that holy mixture is the reason why pizza is as popular as it is today. Tomato pies apparently decided to remove the best one without doing anything special to the remaining two other than “let it cool down on the counter for a while so you can really taste the…room-temperature-ness of it all.”
Here’s the thing about room temperature—it’s a great temperature for a room to be, and a terrible one for any kind of food. A room temperature pizza sounds about as appealing to us as a room temperature beer, and goddamn you for making us think about the sin that is room temperature beer. Ugh.
Quad City-Style Pizza
Eww gross, someone threw up on this pizza! Wait…wait, really? That’s how it’s supposed to look? Um…
Quad City-style pizza, perhaps not surprisingly, originated in the Quad Cities region at the border of Iowa and Illinois, which comprises of Moline, Rock Island, and East Moline in Illinois along with Bettendorf and Davenport in Iowa. We’re just going to list off what makes this pizza style unique without breaking off into commentary, but just assume that after every other word we’re saying “gross” in parentheses.
A Quad City-style pizza uses a dough that has a “spice jam” that is heavy on malt, leading to a toasted nutty flavor, which is then coated with a thin spicy tomato sauce, and covered in sausage and mozzarella before being put in a gas oven for 12 minutes.
It is then cut with scissors into strips instead of being cut into slices because wait okay we can’t hold our tongue any longer, are they fucking serious here? “Spice jam”? Malt? Scissors? And, again, just look at that thing. It looks gross. And that’s when you have someone trying to make it look as tasty as humanly possible. Wikipedia is far less kind.
Ugh, at this point we’re starting to worry that we bit off more than we could chew. That might be a pizza pun, we don’t know, it’s all just running together as a string of awful looking pies.
Ohio Valley-Style Pizza
Ohio has suffered a lot. Cleveland is, well, Cleveland, their whole population spends all their time trying to get out of there by going into space, Pennsylvania is always making fun of them, they have a rough lot. Making matters worse is that their attempt at making pizza, the Ohio Valley-style, seems to have been invented by a chef who wanted to find an elaborate way to turn pizza into a joke on an entire region.
We should point out something here. We’ve got a lot of angry people from Ohio in the comments, screaming, frothing at the mouth, that this style of pizza is not from Cleveland, and that we don’t know geography. To that we’ll say A- of course we don’t know geography, we’re Americans and B-we KNOW that the Ohio Valley is not close to Cleveland, Ohio just has to deal with the fact that any time we talk about their needy-“trying-to-trademark-the-word-The“-ass state, we’re going to make jokes about Cleveland.
Anyway.
Like the delicious Detroit-style pizza, this is a square shaped pie. Unlike that testament to grease and cooking-shit-in-industrial-parts-trays, these pizzas are covered with cold, uncooked toppings. That’s right, after the sauce (don’t get too exciting, it’s literally just stewed tomatoes), crust, and a tiny amount of base cheese is cooked, the rest of the cheese and additional toppings are sprinkled on top like a fucking lunchables.
God. Dammit.
To quote a native Ohio Valley…an, “Are we ahead of our time when it comes to making pizza, or are we just fucked up? I’m voting for the latter.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
St. Louis-Style Pizza
Oh boy. Here we go. St. Louis isn’t that far from Chicago. It’s not. So, maybe much like the residents of the Quad City area, they feel like they have to compete with what we’ve determined is the best pizza in America. If that’s the case, they clearly got a case of the yips, because the pizza style that they developed looks less like a delicious meal and more like a suicide note left by a despondent chef.
They went out of their way to find a unique way to ruin each of the key three ingredients of pizza in a way that, honestly, is impressive. When someone takes a test and tries to get a zero on it, it’s almost as impressive as getting a 100%, because you have to know enough about the right answers to purposely get it wrong. That’s why we at least will tip our hats to St. Louis, because they clearly know enough about pizza to fuck it up beyond recognition.
First, let us start with the crust. As opposed to other pizzas, or any type of bread other than matzo, St. Louis-style pizza doesn’t use yeast, resulting in a thin, cracker-like crust. Obviously, eating a burnt cracker is only so appealing, so to take things up a notch by putting sugar in their sauce, since if you’re going to make something awful, you might as well let it punish the diabetics stupid enough to try to eat it.
Finally, they created their own type of cheese to put on this pizza. Having more in common with Velveeta than anything you’ve ever wanted to put on a pizza, Provel cheese is popular in St. Louis and nowhere else because just look at it. The fact that it’s the awful cheese put on an awful pizza would explain why it never caught on with the rest of the nation.
Why St. Louis embraces it remains a mystery. We suspect that the entire city is being held hostage by Kraft Foods. “Dammit, buy Provel and eat St. Louis Pizza, or so help us, we’ll poison Matt Holliday’s coffee.” (Pro tip: St. Louis residents will do anything in order to stop a member of the Cardinals from being poisoned.)
Ugh. Just thinking about all these pizzas is making us sick. Here, go back to the one about the tasty pizzas again. That’s a much better way to go. Just go to your happy place. Your cheesy, saucy happy place.
America Fun Fact of the Day 
The Quad City-Style-Pizza is incredibly disgusting in its native form—too much cheese and undercooked (thanks to the bad technique stole from one restaurant and spread region-wide for some misguided reason). Order it light on the cheese from one of the many pretender purveyors and request it cooked brown on top, and you have a fine variant of South side Chicago pizza. South side pizza—run through a pastry roller and with uncooked sausage on top—is superior, but the QC crust and tangy sauce with lighter cheese and crumbled sausage is a nice subset.
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http://www.timeout.com/chicago/food-drink/best-new-pizzeria-eat-out-awards-2012
Weird that in the city that has the best pizza places on the planet that a Quad City style pizza place was named the best new pizzaeria of 2012.
You’re right it must be really gross.
We asked one of our Chicago staffers, and his response was, “To be fair, only two pizzerias opened in Chicago in all of 2012. It’s still bad, and gross, and people who defend it should feel uneasy about their taste in pizza. Also, half of the write up of this place recommends a pizza that puts fucking lettuce on it, which, what the hell.”
Typical Liberal nonsense post- you call tomato pies a “salmonella risk”. For what? You already said there’s no cheese on it- no meat either, so where are you coming up w/ your “we need more big government to regulate pizza” bullshit??? You Obama lovers always want to find some way to bring “health” into your stupid, sorry-ass homo nonsense…
Are you fucking serious? Are you a person who exists in real fucking life? This is literally part of a two-part pizza post where the “good” pizzas are so unhealthy they’re outlawed in Morocco, and you have the audacity to think we’re talking about health food when we say your cold tomato paste pizza bread is trash?
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What breed of moron wrote this? Cleveland pizza is completely different from “valley style” pizza. While Cleveland(and it’s pizza) may BE shit, (just like all other pizza anywhere and everywhere) real, legit “valley style” pizza, is no less than heaven on that thin, crisp yet delightfully pillowy, perfectly balanced crust, which is only found at a few joints between Cincinnati and Columbus. Before you start with the assumptions, I’d like to state that I have lived and travelled all around the US. Yes, I’ve lived in Chicago. Tried dozens of places there yet overall, the pizza was just average. Have lived elsewhere for over four years now, and I still get mad cravings for that glorious ohio pie… uuuugh lol.
This might be the most depressing comment ever posted on our site.
Um I don’t understand how you can have Tomato Pie on this list. Thats like saying an orange is the worst tasting banana. It’s not exactly Pizza. And I don’t know where you’ ve had it but Tomato Pie is amazing. Especially and most likely only in the bakeries of South Philly.
St. Louis style pizza is fucking delicious. . If we wanted yeast in our pizza we’d call your Mom.
Dan, we give you a D- for your pizza tastes, but a solid A in your mom joke ability. Well played, very well played.
Damnit! It’s Super B- Sunday, and I WANT SOME DICARLO’S PIZZA (Ohio Valley). Alas and alak, I am on the CT / MASS boarder.
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Dude, valley style is my favorite. This article is based on personal opinions at best.
Ohio Valley pizza is the best pizza. Even try it man? Uncultured round pizza normies. Jag off.
“Uncultured round pizza normies.” We’re not even mad.
Ohio Valley pizza is the BEST and you, sir, are on asshole.
We’re on asshole? Like one asshole? How do we keep our footing?
Oh sorry. I stand corrected. You’re all assholes. Lol.
Ohio Valley style pizza is hands downs the best. You sound like a fatass internet troll who hates pizza that isn’t all bread and grease lol. Surprised if you respond if you arnt already dead from a heart attack.
Ohio valley pizza rules….you just don’t have any taste. The cheese and pepperoni are steam cooked in the box after its tossed on top. Dont let any critic choose for you…try it yourself…there is a reason why there are so many people Trying to duplicate it from the crust up!
Patrick McMasters
Pmcmastets58@gmail.com
Please Ohio Valley style enthusiasta let your voices, well, let your thoughts be heard…read! I like pizza in all of its glorious forms. Crust is the foundation, very important. Sauce is not for desert, so keep the sugar for your coffee in the north, and your sweeeeet yes in the south! As with BBQ, the wars rage in this nation. Pizza the same way. It comes down to personal preference. Since I left home at seventeen, I’ve tried to diligently find a replacement for DiCarlo’s Original, Ray’s of Wintersville, so many, so loved, all very close in flavor, crust. The originators, Primo, Galdo, Pepi, and Michael, forgive me If I’ve missed anyone, (3rd Street in Stuebenville, Ohio), Hilliard Ohio, Zanesville Ohio, Wheeling WVA, Weirton WVA, Pittsburgh PA, Myrtle Beach SC. For success such as this, someone with taste, and love of Pizza and where to find it..its not the worst and shouldn’t be berated as your article has done! Again, I love Pizza, all kinds! Least liked is any chain store pizza. Give me family owned, made with pride, no I haventbtried all that you mentioned. Due to traveling when younger, I had been in 2/3 of the USA from the east coast to the Midwest by the time I was 17. I then joined the USAF. I HAVE TRAVELED…I HAVE HAD PIZZA …..YOU NAME THE PLACE I MAY HAVE HAD IT…MAYBE NOT…..BUT READING YOUR BLOG …BEST…WORST…..SOME PEOPLE JUST WANT THE CLICKS FOR ADVERTISING PURPOSES. TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I WILL DRIVE 7.5 HOURS FOR OHIO VALLEY STYLE PIZZA…..OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS ONE….JUST LIKE EVERYONE HAS A BACKSIDE THAT WE SIT ON……MAKE YOUR OWN MIND UP….TRY IT….AND COME BACK HERE AND LEAVE YOUR OPINIONS….I DESPISE CRITICS ….I FIND MOST AREN’T WORTH THE TIME THEIR PARENTS……NEVER MIND ILL BE CIVIL! Sorry if I stepped on anyone’s toes!!!
7.5 hours is way too long to drive for a pizza, buddy. That’s a bit unhinged.
Depends on what that pizza and people in the area can bring you back home to, it was family, pizza, Friday nights, Saturday nights…hot pizza friends….nostalgia! DiCarlos Original was take out only. We hung out in the parking lot as teens. Are pizza, congregated, etc…nostalgia! Unhinged maybe but I won’t out down some or something if I haven’t tried it. And I Love my family and friends…..and DiCarlo’s Original I love in NC now. Have driven 7.5 hrs for visit and pizza. Thank God for WHOMEVER opened franchise in Myrtle Beach, that’s only 4.5 hrs. Passing thru Hiliard Ohio above Columbus, scheduled to hit at opening time 1030am to purchase 60 slices for a visit to Michigan. It was half baked, sauce cheese and pepperoni on the side. Reheat slices at 450′ just until steam starts add sauce some cheese leave in oven for 5 more mins, remove and place in box, add cheese and pepperoni out kid on box and wait a few. Then kick back and enjoy! Nostalgia! Thank you to the DiCarlos family…..
Zontini’s makes square pizza and IT IS DELICIOUS! The first pizza in years that I have found around the Valley that I would even consider ordering up against the greatness of DeFelice Bros.
Quad city style pizza is the best you stupid liberal Clinton loving moron I don’t understand how you couldn’t love it. You are aenis to society. Go to fields of pizza in Moline, then tell me quad city style pizza is gross
How is hating your stupid bullshit scissor pizza a liberal viewpoint, you hayseed?
You are so off with Ohio valley style pizza. The sauce is more than stewed tomatoes (utilizes small amount of green pepper). The topping, while “cold” actually warm upon contact with the steaming pizza. This allows the toppings to retain their independence in the flavor profile. With crunchy crust and soft (but not chewy dough) I assure you this is a great style of pizza rooted in a wonderful tradition. If you hit up the right shop (dicarlos) you are in for a real treat. This is far from the lunchable disaster you described. I’m not sure how you gathered your information for this article but you are WAY off base.
Sean, Thankyou….for your rebuttal. I agree. I’m sorry even though this was printed several years ago. I was wondering if you may have worked at a DiCarlo’s?
Born in Steubenville, lived in Mingo Junction. (Mingo), Wintersville. I love people with opinions. Especially, isolated critics. Everyone has an opinion, sorta like asses some stink like this article and some know how to investigate and put info, not opinions out there to mess with people that have never tried it! My father knew the DiCarlo’s very well. The school system served DiCarlo’s. I have an ass and this is my opinion! DiCarlo’s makes great pizza. Don’t let any critic stop you from trying anything! Be your own judge. Pizza is a personal experience!
I have lived here for 40 years. Hands down the worst pizza i have ever tasted. My wife loves it. I always have the feeling that it is a local joke that is foisted on folks not born here. Just before we die, the joke is explained to us. Fair crust, tomato sauce ( I have never seen a piece of green pepper), cold pepperoni, cold cheese. I have always wondered why locals heat the leftovers the next day. Since the cheese was cold when they bought it.
I am so happy to see the huge amount of kick back on your Blasphemous comments about Valley style pizza particularly DiCarlos original! It is the best in my opinion! Not to take away from anyone else’s pizza because I love it all! But I’ve been to Italy and Malta and it’s the closest thing to their piece of there is! When I go back to the valley to to visit the first thing I do is get DiCarlos people I even see anybody my favorite is Wheeling West Virginia store I grew up in Wellsburg all of them are a little different than one another but they are all equally delicious makes a good breakfast right out of the fridgerator!
Cleveland isn’t part of the Ohio Valley, genius. Cleveland has a style all their own.
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I’ll try to be brief… I grew up in Mississippi and I’ve often said, with a FEW notable exceptions (i.e., Maryland crabs, the cities of Chicago and New York in general, and a few others I haven’t visited) food gets less flavorful the farther one gets from the Gulf Coast. Those from GC states get a lot of influences… soul food,cooking Caribbean food, Tex-Mex, Cuban food, Creole food, and even the lowly state of Mississippi has a lot of Asian influence thanks to solid populations of folks with Vietnamese and Chinese heritage. The South is diverse and that diversity shows in lots of great fusion food. Try getting a bowl of gumbo in Lincoln, NE or Springfield, MO and you’ll see what I mean.Their food of choice seems to be a grilled cheese baked in the oven with white bread (no butter) and American cheese singles.
I now live in the St. Louis area and recently argued with a co-worker about the awfulness of the style of pizza here. The crust is only sort of bad (I can see how a few people MAY like it OK). The sauce is really bad (enough sugar already!). But that Provel cheese tastes gooey, thin and processed, much as a pizza would taste with slices of Kraft American cheese or Velveeta on top. My logical assaults didn’t assuage him. But he’s an exception.
MOST folks here, when you ask about St. Louis pizza will shrug and offer half-throated apologies. Yes, MOST of them know it’s bad, but what else have they got? They’re far away from ANY coast. No barbecue (like KC or Memphis). No Creole (like New Orleans). No Tex-Mex (like Dallas, Austin and Houston). No Cuban (Miami, Orlando). No soul food (anywhere south of here). Yes, it’s sweet sauce on crusty cardboard with processed cheese goo on top. Rightly listed as the worst.
Brian, when you started this with “I’ll try to be brief…I grew up in…” we were SUPER WORRIED that we’d be rolling our eyes at this response.
But…no, that was very well said. 100% accurate. That’s an A+ comment there.
Absolutely! One way to tell a true St. Louis citizen, place a bunch of crackers together in a shape that resembles a circle. Next, cover it with sugary tomato sauce and velveeta. Bake it till its literally a hot mess. Anyone else when asked what this is would probably raise their eyebrow and shrug, but it’s “pizza” to a St. Louis native.
Thanks! Love the site. Keep up keeping it American (and cleverly entertaining). And avoid Imo’s Pizza (and its imposter wannabe, Cecil Whittaker’s) when traveling through the city with the big arch. Eat at Arby’s. If you must choose local, I’d recommed… no, just eat at Arby’s. Or pack in pulled pork from Memphis.
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Cleveland has nothing to do with the Ohio Valley — geographically, culturally, or otherwise. If you want to write an article dissing geographical regions and their cuisine, you might want to actually do some research first. Like look at a map, for example.
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I live in the Ohio Valley. Transplanted from northern Ohio. Been here for 40 years. Somewhere in my subconscious I have always believed that folks in this area do not really like DiCarlos pizza, they just say they do to get outsiders to eat it and then laugh like hell when we upchuck our first slice. It is sad dough with a bit of tomato sauce and cold cheese. If you are lucky, you will get a bit of taste from the single slice of pepperoni on each sllce, just one per slice. Who thought this up? The pizza is never hot, it can’t be. You put cold cheese on it. Worst pizza ever!!!!
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These comments are amazing. I don’t even feel bad my favorite pizza got dissed in the best article (though, my 2nd favorite got 1st place on the best so, I guess I balance out). This makes me want to curl up with a pizza and some popcorn and watch the show.
Your article is so absolutely idiotic on so many levels that it would take too much time to even consider pointing out the seemingly endless flaws.
Glad that the 8-9 people who’ve actually read it at least have a brilliant example of how not to formulate an article based solely on opinion and not fact, statistics, cultural relevance and again more facts.
You’re an idiot and you need to buy a big ass map cuz you have no idea where the f$&$k anyplace is.
We know where your head is, Wallace.
(up your ass)
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I’ve lived in Ohio all my life. Akron, Cleveland area, and now Columbus. I’ve never heard of Ohio style pizza lol
Head up the road a bit, just north of
Columbus to Hilliard, Ohio.There is a DiCarlo’s Original pizza there. It’s actually OHIO VALLEY STYLE PIZZA.
DiCarlo’s started it, and many have copied it. It’s simple from it’s crust, sauce, real cheese, great pepperoni.
I have never had a box with one slice of pepperoni as someone mentioned earlier. I prefer it hot out of the box.
It has just left the oven steaming hot, cut, placed in the box. Cheese and pepperoni are tossed on top of steaming sauce. Cheese melts, and pepperoni is hot, but not burnt and greasy. each element had it’s best flavor put forward.
“Cleveland Style Pizza. Cleveland is a city associated with its diverse culture and history. And thanks to internationally renowned environmental artist David Jakupca, Cleveland is now known for its legendary Cleveland style pizza. Here is the recipe!First, there is the dough followed by the cheese then your favorite toppings. Last–and the secret–the pizza sauce. The sauce forms nooks and crannies on top of the pizza and a unique crispy crust underneath. Perfection every time–that’s Cleveland style pizza! Cleveland Style Pizza is a registered trademark, Pat. Pend.” –card front. “Cleveland Style Pizza. Birth of a legend: using food as a palette, artist David Jakupca has created a delectable masterpiece–the Cleveland style pizza. Cleveland now shares in the popularity that New York and Chicago have for classic pizzas.” –card verso. Jakupca was the owner of Santino’s Pizza on Broadview Rd. in Seven Hills.
http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/postcards/id/4701/rec/1
“First, there is the dough followed by the cheese then your favorite toppings. Last–and the secret–the pizza sauce.”
You just described every pizza…
Ohio valley pizza is made throughout east Ohio, north W.Va and west pa. Truth is you weren’t served this pizza properly. This pizza does have cheese on it when it’s in the oven. Then they top it and put it in the box. Th e box is so essential, the heat melts the cheese without making it greasy. It’s delish. I’ve eaten pizza all over the country and this is my favorite, crunchy crust, no sogginess, red sauce, mush, xtra cheese. Sadly it’s a dying art here. As the old timers retire the new kids change it and have ruined most of the local shops. These are inedible blobs, maybe you tasted one of them?
Ohio Valley style pizza is hands downs the best. You sound like a fatass internet troll who hates pizza that isn’t all bread and grease lol. Surprised if you respond if you arnt already dead from a heart attack.
Ah yes, because it is the sophisticated gentleman, as opposed to the fatass internet troll, who comments on a 6 year old article with such classic witticisms as “lol Surprised if you respond if you arnt already dead from a heart attack”
The regional style of pizza known as “Ohio Valley Pizza” has nothing to do with the state of Ohio as a whole. Btw, AFFOTD, great blog, but, Cleveland is nowhere near the Ohio Valley and doesn’t sell this style of pizza. Two minutes of better research would have helped to avoid this mistake. Also, it is not known as “Ohio Pizza”, as someone earlier here mistakenly called it. The region, as it relates to the pizza style, refers only to the cities and towns located along and near the banks of the Ohio River, starting just north of Pittsburgh, the city where the Ohio River begins, through a good section of Western Pennsylvania, Northern West Virginia and Southeastern Ohio.
This pizza first appeared in Steubenville, OH and migrated north into Pennsylvania and south along the Ohio River. Made properly, the crust is thick, yet light in composition and texture. Those who would pile on the toppings miss the point entirely by overwhelming the subtle exchange between the unique sauce and cheese. Never tried Di Carlo’s yet and it sounds great, but I can vouch for the qualities of a plain slice of The Original Pizza House version, found in Ambridge, PA.
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Absolutely on the button! Have been eating it since I was old enough. I am 61 now. I have eaten pizza in 2/3 of the US. From East coast to Midwest.
Like many kinds of pizza. Since I live in NC, I cannot get it locally. I went to Myrtle Beach for a conference and had DiCarlo’s Original style pizza. Obviously someone thinks it good enough to sell and eat. No longer in the Valley only! Thank you for spot on comment!
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You missed one. Look up “altoona style pizza” Salami, green peppers, and… American cheese. Apparently originated sometime in the 1960s or ’70s at the Altoona Hotel, in Pennsylvania. Yeah, that time frame makes sense, bc obviously there were drugs involved. Lots of drugs. I mean it totally makes sense in the context of a single, drug-induced, late-night munchies, whatever’s-currently-in-the-fridge-becomes-“pizza” episode, (in which case I’m actually surprised they didn’t also drizzle hot sauce on top) but whoever invented this was then able to convince other people to pay them money for it, which can only mean they were all just as high as the creator, and apparently stayed that way, for many years. And the population of Altooona must have done so many drugs that their offspring are still feeling it to this day, because they are still selling this ridiculous parody of pizza now!. Does the town of Altoona not have a White Castle to fill the “food you would only eat when stoned/drunk, and be embarassed later to admit that you had eaten it” niche?
While we had not heard of this before, we must agree that this deserves inclusion. That sounds pretty damn foul
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Y’all can get bent! St Louis pizza is amazing!
The comments section is the best part. Thank you for making this list!
I’m not sure where you are from but trashing St Louis style pizza you must be from Chicago with your nasty a$$ half cooked doughy pizza with sauce on top! Who puts sauce on top of a pizza?? Where’s the cheese?! And BTW Provel cheese is awesome!
You’ve clearly nearly had Chicago style pizza, which is roughly 90% cheese, but enjoy your bullshit processed cheese that hasn’t made inroads outside of St. Louis depsite the fact that America LOVES bullshit processed cheese
As someone from Missouri/ Saint Louis, I can honestly say two things.
Our pizza is superior, non natives simply cannot withstand the molten miracle, and we’re glad you choose to pretend to hate it, because we don’t like you and don’t like to share. Please go eat your greasy trash in whatever trash place you’re from.
Alaska is larger in area than California
……yes, but California is the largest in POPULATION
Why isn’t Poppa John’s on your list?
Oh, excuse me.
This is an article on the worst regional pizzas.
Not the worst pizza in the United States.
While we’d say St. Louis-Style Pizza is worse………we appreciate what you did there, and we can join you on the “Papa John’s sucks” bandwagon. Your pizza isn’t suddenly better if it comes with a banana pepper for some bullshit reason, JOHN.
(though that garlic butter is not the worst)
You’ve gotta be from Michigan. I mean that Detroit grease bomb in a pan is on your top list and you hate on Ohio. Classy getting your references from Wikipedia. Can’t make it on a real blog so you end up here probably logging in from Mom’s basement.
This article is 9 years old, but guess the internet is a little slower out there in Ohio then?
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