An 80-year old Motown pizza recipe has gained adherents from New York to L.A.
The Cheese Pizza and the Super 6 Mile Pizza at Buddy’s Pizza in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Rebecca, THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES)
As a mid-century native of the great Motor City, I grew up eating a pretty nuts-and-bolts, workingman’s diet. Think fast-food burgers, Americanized Chinese food and boatloads of chili dogs and pizza pies. I’m not sure I ever encountered a fresh vegetable until I left for college, and even then I never crossed paths with anything but iceberg lettuce or shockingly sweet cole slaw, especially the variety served at Big Boy restaurant, where it came with fries on a double-decker burger deal. Arugula? What the heck is that?
But once I became a hell-on-wheels teenager able to escape the cookie-cutter, white bread suburb of my childhood, my palate expanded, if but slightly, and I discovered that Detroit was home to a regional variant on the pizza pie that was a future national phenom waiting to happen. Blame local bar owner Gus Guerra, who in 1946 had his wife, Anna, crib her Sicilian mother’s dough recipe and started baking pizzas at Buddy’s Rendezvous–augmenting the appeal of a watering-hole better known for its rep as a “blind pig,” or slightly illegal gambling emporium.
The magical blue steel pan: a Detroit pizza secret weapon
WASHINGTON, DC- AUGUST 12: Pizza dough and cheeses in the kitchen of Ivy & Coney photographed August … THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
Here’s where the story takes on a distinctive Detroit flavor: the dough, known as sfincione back in the old country, was an airy, focaccia-like construction. But Gus decided to bake the pies in blue steel pans he bought from local automobile suppliers, who generally sold them to factories to hold ball bearings and such. The marriage made in pizza heaven was complete: add Wisconsin brick cheese, a layer of pepperoni pressed directly into the dough and three racing stripes of tangy tomato sauce and the square-shaped legend was born!
Loui’s Pizza in Hazel Park: my personal fave
Take out pizza from Loui’s in Hazel Park, MI. DAVID WEISS, FORBES.COM
Excuse the glorious mess above, a snapshot of a square pie as executed by old-school pizzaioli at Loui’s Pizza and devoured in my rental car during a recent visit home. While most locals hie to one of the 22 suburban locations of industry titan, Buddy’s Pizza, I prefer the mom ‘n’ pop vibe of Loui’s–what with the empty Chianti bottles hanging from the ceiling and the gruff, take no prisoners servers. My old routine was to play the ponies at the now-defunct Hazel Park Raceway, then drown my consistent post-loss sorrows in four slices of Detroit’s definitional square pie. P.S., “small” size is the optimal ordering strategy, as every piece has maximum crust square-footage per bite. Its crunchy-sweet crackle and char accounts for 95% of the joy of the genre.
Detroit reborn: no longer the butt of jokes!
A view down Woodward Ave. in downtown Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via … More CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
As you’ve likely heard by now, the metropolis formerly derided as the Murder City has been reborn as the Midwest’s answer to Brooklyn, a hipster haven and tech-bro-and-sis loft-life where urban decay once seemed incurable. The D actually crops up on short lists of must-visit cities in America, hosting numerous riverfront music festivals as well as historical attractions like the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. Downtown is also home to a pair of competing chili dog emporia, but let’s save that gut-wrecking delicacy for another day. The now-ubiquitous pie first took the pizza world in 2012 at the International Pizza Expo and has never once looked back. Even Little Caesars is hawking a mass-produced iteration to those who don’t know no better. Harrumph!
Detroit pizza goes viral in a good way
From Boston to Barcelona (literally, at a joint called Hoxton Poblenou), the pizza gospel according to Motown is now crowded with self-reporting foodies duly checking the royal box. But might I add a caveat if not an outright warning? The lasagna-like, lumber-thick pizza out of neighboring Chicago at Lou Malnati’s or Pizzeria Uno should not be confused with the crisp and caramelized, cheesy/crusty marvel out of Detroit. Chitown is a fine town for Italian beef sandwiches and loaded hot dogs, but I’m unofficially on record as a nano-hater when it comes to their glutinous, knife-and-fork pizzas. Don’t send a hitman, fellas, just speaking truth to pepperoncini!
Goin’ back to Cali, Cali….
Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin of Quarter Sheets in Los Angeles. MAGGIE SHANNON
Now that I can call myself a nearly-lifelong Angeleno, I’m happy to report that this pie-happy town has more legit square-shaped pies than you can shake a spatula at. At Quarter Sheets in ice-cool Echo Park, owners Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin serve up their gourmet take on infamous regional pizzas, including some artisanal upgrades on the spartan Motown standard. QS earned their way into a New York Times list of LA’s best eateries a few years back, noting ingredients like hazelnut pesto and taggiasca olives replacing the usual sausage and green pepper of my youth. Apollonia’s Pizzeria in in the midtown Wilshire district is faith-keeping with their white Acapulco Gold pie, adorned with arugula, ricotta and truffle oil. I know, not very Detroit, but I’m about it.
Wherever you’re headed in the coming vacation season, you’re likely to find a credible version of Detroit’s finest. In San Francisco, locals love Pizza Squared; My Friend Derek’s in Seattle calls itself an “underground” pizza source, as it has no physical location and can only be picked up (on certain days of the week); and Via 313 Pizza in Texas, Utah and Colorado is run by a couple of young Detroit natives who pride themselves on reproducing the four-sided miracle with religious attention to detail. Try the Bobo Brazil–named after a beloved local TV wrestler–with Calabrese, sausage, pepper flakes and Mike’s hot honey. Knowing Bobo, he would have eaten two in a sitting and then broken a balsa-wood chair on the chef’s head, just out of habit. Salute….
