The Best Pizza in the United States

Pan pizza with a ring of caramelized mozzarella baked right into the crust is the move at this West Town pizza shop, which draws from the legacy of Chicago pan legend Burt Katz. The dough is thick and crunchy, built to hold serious amounts of cheese and sauce, finished with fresh mozzarella dolloped on top. Topping combos run from pineapple-jalapeño-bacon to sausage-ricotta situations. Order online ahead; there's also a Berwyn location if you're out that way.

The square slices here come out of the pan thick, crisp-bottomed, and generously topped, which is the whole argument. This Upper West Side counter spot runs on a steady churn of regulars and walk-ins, with a few seats if you're lucky and no pretense about it either way. The cacio e pepe slice landed on Time Out's list of the best pizzas in the world, and 50 Top Pizza puts the shop at number four for slices in the country.

The triangular house slice here has a quiet cult following, which is funny for a spot that built its name on thick, square Sicilian cuts. This is a counter-service pizza shop where the square pies come topped with things like cacio e pepe and street corn, and the olive oil and grated Parm on the regular slice draws inevitable Di Fara comparisons. Time Out put the cacio e pepe among the best pizzas in the world, if that helps you decide.

The naturally leavened crust at this cozy Mississippi Avenue pizza shop is made with Oregon-grown organic wheat, and the toppings lean seasonal and unexpected in ways that make you rethink what belongs on a pie. Chef Sarah Minnick, who got a full Netflix "Chef's Table: Pizza" episode to herself, decorates each one with edible flowers and whatever's at the market. Save room for the homemade ice cream, which regulars treat as the main event.

Chris Bianco is the Bronx-born pizzaiolo who convinced the rest of the country that Phoenix belongs in the pizza conversation, and this snug 42-seat brick room in Heritage Square is where it started. Wood-fired Neapolitan pies come out of an oven that has been running for decades, drawing lines that have shown no signs of shortening. Bianco holds two James Beard Awards, which is two more than most people who make pizza for a living.

Anthony Mangieri runs the wood-burning oven himself, every service, at this airy Lower East Side pizza shop tiled in black and white and lined with canned tomatoes. The Neapolitan pies come out with fluffy edges and thin, papery crusts, topped with not much more than mozzarella di bufala and sweet tomato sauce, which is the whole point. A Michelin Bib Gourmand and ranked first in the country by 50 Top Pizza USA. Reservations are scarce, so arrive early and queue.

The dough here is made by hand in the Neapolitan tradition, soft enough that a margherita lands on the table looking almost too relaxed to be pizza. Partenope is a full-sit-down Italian restaurant on Main Street, the kind of place that takes its time with both the pasta and the service. It landed on 50 Top Pizza USA, which for Dallas is a meaningful data point. The room feels warm rather than scene-y, which in this city counts for something.

A neon green peace sign marks the door on a narrow Fishtown lane, and inside what used to look like an auto repair shop, the room opens into light wood and clean lines, somewhere between a pizza bar and a Scandinavian chapel. The menu is short, the dough is organic, and the crust stays crisp and chewy to the last bite. Natural wines and snacks keep you busy while you wait. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

Sfincione is Sicilian street food, something between focaccia and pizza, and this focacceria in the Gulch has built its entire identity around it. The dough gets folded in an open kitchen, then topped with fontina, breadcrumbs, and pecorino before rotating varieties like roasted potato cream or spicy tomato with burrata take over. The menu is short by design. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and Esquire named it among the best new restaurants in America in 2024.

The line wraps around the corner off Palumbo Park at any hour, which tells you what you need to know before you even smell the place. Angelo's is a cash-only, no-seating slice shop and cheesesteak counter in South Philly, meaning you'll be eating on a bench or a curb like everyone else. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which the sesame-seed hoagies loaded with Cooper Sharp do nothing to contradict.

Inch-thick pan pizzas baked to order out of a tiny Echo Park shop with a vinyl and cassette collection on the walls. Quarter Sheets draws a crowd serious enough that a wait is part of the deal, and the pastries from the team's baker, a James Beard semifinalist, are a genuine surprise at a pizza counter. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, and the New York Times put it on their restaurant list. Wear whatever you'd wear to a friend's place.

The line out the door on South 2nd is the most honest review you'll find. This Williamsburg slice shop has a counter, a few standing ledges, and pizza makers working in plain sight from dough to oven. The crust is thin, crisp, and taken seriously. 50 Top Pizza ranked it the top slice shop in the country, and the New York Times put it on their short list too. Order, pay, wait for your name, eat standing up. That's the whole deal.

This Neapolitan pizzeria in Cleveland Park has the kind of certification from Naples that sounds like it should come with a notarized stamp, and it takes the paperwork seriously. The pies come out blistered and soft, with buffalo mozzarella, San Marzano tomatoes, and anchovies applied without apology. It's casual and loud with families, and the chef was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Chef.

The name is short for "saint," not "street," which tells you something about how seriously they take the bit. A tile-lined slice shop up front gives way, through an actual curtain, to a dim room with dark wood and funk on the speakers. East Coast-style pies, a tight cocktail list, and chicken Parm that earns its place on the menu. Ranked seventh on 50 Top Pizza's Slice USA list, this Magazine Street spot has done real work putting New Orleans on the pizza map.

The thing that sets this West Pico pizza shop apart is the cornicione, puffy and pinched with a mochi-like chew that signals the Japan-meets-Italy premise before you've taken a proper bite. Individual pies come red or white, traditional or quietly strange, and a counter with a front-row view of the prep keeps the room honest. Ranked second in the country by 50 Top Pizza USA, Pizzeria Sei draws a crowd that treats a Tuesday like a reservation worth keeping.

The sunny yellow exterior and orange canopy on the corner of Melrose are hard to miss, which is fitting because neither is the pizza inside. Nancy Silverton's pizzeria has been an LA institution forever, with bare wood tables, skylights, and a Bib Gourmand to its name. The pies come out of the oven with puffy, golden edges, and the seasonal dessert selection runs deep enough to cause genuine indecision.

A painting of Mos Def watches over the counter at this white-walled thin-crust slice shop on Larkin, where skate photos and a boombox fill out the vibe. The pizza is the main event, but the sandwiches, including a mortadella melt with cheese and pesto, have earned their own press. They bake the bread in-house now, which tells you something about how seriously the team takes the side project.

A wall of bread greets you before you see a single pizza, which tells you everything about Dan Richer's priorities. This wood-fired pizzeria in Jersey City runs on long-fermentation dough and a sourcing philosophy that treats New Jersey farms as co-authors, not suppliers. The original dining room, once a theater, still has that weathered-plaster gravitas. Ranked third in the country by 50 Top Pizza, and a James Beard nominee.

Seven ovens, eleven styles of pizza, and one corner spot in North Beach that takes the whole argument about which regional pie is superior and simply refuses to pick a side. Tony Gemignani's pizzeria runs Neapolitan next to Detroit next to New Haven next to Roman, all under one roof, which is either heresy or the only sane position. It lands at number two on 50 Top Pizza USA and number ten in the world.

Pizz'amici is a tavern-style pizza shop in West Town, where the thin, cracker-crisp crust gets charred on the bottom and cut into squares. It's a nostalgic room with a pepperoni Negroni on the menu, plus tall focaccia and sausage and peppers for the old-school completists. Tables go quickly, so plan ahead or order carryout, which is easier than winning the lottery and only slightly less crowded.

The Sicilian square here comes sauce-on-top, which is either the detail that makes you understand everything about Brooklyn pizza or the one you'll spend a whole slice arguing about. L&B Spumoni Gardens is an old-school Gravesend pizzeria where the outdoor tables fill up on summer nights with people who clearly know to finish with the almond spumoni. The crunchy, charred corners have been the point since forever.

The wood-fired oven is the organizing principle here, turning out pizzas, proteins, and vegetables with the kind of low-key confidence that comes from caring about the grain in your dough. This is a cozy neighborhood restaurant from Kelly Whitaker, who took home a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur in 2024. Oysters and chicken-liver mousse start things off; a bottle of Lambrusco keeps things moving. It's the kind of room where nobody's trying too hard, which takes more effort than it looks.

Red Wagon is a casual neighborhood pizzeria in south Minneapolis that treats flour like a perishable, using local grain milled within about three days of becoming dough. The crust comes out chewy and a little nutty. The toppings travel further than the flour, from a fig balsamic spiral to a pie dressed like a bánh mì. Order at a counter, wear whatever, and expect the carrots to be pickled with more care than your last haircut.

The wood-fired oven in this Ravenswood Neapolitan pizzeria burns through dough the way it's done in Naples, leaving a soft, charred crust that folds without argument. The chef trained in Italy and the obsession shows, with many ingredients sourced from there directly. The menu stays traditional, appetizers and desserts rounding out the pizza, and the room has an easy warmth that makes an hour feel like twenty minutes.

A wood-fired brick oven anchors this sprawling bakery and cafe in the Mission, where the bread alone draws a line out the door most mornings. The Scandinavian-influenced dining room is airy enough that waiting feels less painful than it sounds. Coffee beans are roasted in-house, pastries lean contemporary, and the sourdough loaves are the kind people carry home on planes. Go for breakfast or lunch and plan to leave with a bag of something.

The line forms before the doors open, which tells you something about a strip-mall pizzeria in suburban Maryland. Tony Conte left fine dining to make neo-Neapolitan pies here, and the blistered crusts show it. A James Beard nominee and a spot on 50 Top Pizza USA, the place punches well past its zip code. The roasted potato and onion pizza, fragrant with rosemary, was named one of the DC area's favorite dishes of 2025.

The Montanara Starita comes out of the kitchen lightly fried, sauced, and finished in the wood-fired oven, which is a more interesting origin story than most Midtown pizzas can claim. This Neapolitan pizza shop off Times Square is the New York branch of a Naples institution, run by a chef who grew up in the family craft. Ranked seventh on 50 Top Pizza USA, it draws a crowd that skips the tourist traps one block over and knows exactly what they came for.

The bread is the whole philosophy here: Union Loafers is a bakery-turned-full-service restaurant in Botanical Heights where naturally leavened loaves set the tone for everything else on the menu. The pizzas split the difference between New York chew and Neapolitan char, and the sandwiches built on house bread give you a very good reason to show up before dinner. St. Louis-style pizza is conspicuously absent, which some locals treat as a provocation.

A gold-embellished bar takes up half the dining room at this wood-fired pizza shop in North Central Charleston, facing an open kitchen and a serious natural wine collection. The pizzas lean creative, the booths fill fast with groups who came for the full spread, and there's Korean fried chicken for anyone who showed up mostly for the wine. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2026.

A lakeside terrace with a direct view of the water is a strong opening argument for any pizza shop, and Robert's doesn't squander it. The pies have a crispy, well-salted crust and toppings that lean generous rather than restrained, built for sharing. The room itself is airy, anchored by a big bar counter, and the staff treats you like an actual guest. It landed at #8 on 50 Top Pizza USA, which tracks.

Chris Bianco, the Phoenix pizza legend, brought his wood-fired pies to Los Angeles and the lines haven't stopped since. This is a pizza shop in ROW DTLA with a handful of pies on the menu, a takeout window, and outdoor seats where people happily eat standing up over open boxes. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which should settle the New York argument. Lunch adds sandwiches; the antipasto platter fills the gaps.

The wafer-thin crust crackles and snaps under toppings loaded on with no apologies, and the fennel sausage quietly reminds you this used to be Milwaukee's Italian quarter. Zaffiro's is a tavern-style pizza bar that has been doing this for what feels like forever, red-checkered tablecloths and Blatz on tap and all. Circle pie, square cut, built to be eaten beside strangers under neon light.

A wood-fired pizza and pasta spot a couple of blocks from the Sullivan's Island beach, up on a second floor where the pale blue seating and bleached wood manage to feel coastal without a single pelican painting in sight. The kitchen pulls from Italian, French, and Spanish influences alongside Lowcountry ones, and the vegetables from local farms make the salads genuinely competitive with the pizza. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2024.

The wood-fired oven does the talking here, blistering crusts until they're charred and chewy in all the right spots. Bar Del Corso is a pizza shop on Beacon Avenue that keeps quietly outrunning that label, with fried risotto balls, grilled octopus, and aperitivo-forward cocktails filling out a short menu. The back patio is easy to miss, the waits are not. The New York Times has put it on their Seattle list, and the James Beard Foundation named it a hospitality semifinalist.

The menu lives on a sign above the counter, and you decide on your pizza before you've even found a seat at the communal tables. This cavernous Neapolitan pizza shop shares its dining room with the prep kitchen, so you watch the dough get shaped and slid into one of three wood-fired ovens while you wait. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a spot on 50 Top Pizza USA, which tracks for a place that draws lines in a strip-mall parking lot.

Whole pies only, no exceptions, which has annoyed exactly the kind of person who deserves to be annoyed. Chrissy's is a slice-free NY-style pizza shop in Greenpoint where the chef spent pandemic years perfecting thin-crust pies in his apartment before graduating through pop-ups to a permanent counter. The New York Times put it on their best pizza in New York list, which is not a short list to land on.

The building was a post office once, and the open kitchen has replaced the sorting floor with a wood-fired oven at its center. Tribute is a neo-Neapolitan pizza shop that also does grandma-style and New York slices, with pies named as nods to figures from the American pizza world. The bar leans heavily into tequila and whiskey, and the staff can walk you through all of it without making you feel slow for asking.

Naan as a pizza base, naan as a butter chicken calzone brushed with ghee, naan as the main argument for coming back: this Logan Square Indian restaurant has built a personality around the flatbread, then filled out the menu with Kerala crab curry and chana chaat to prove it isn't a one-trick kitchen. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, with a James Beard semifinalist nod behind it. The exposed brick and long bar make the room feel loose, which matches the cooking.

The wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas come out gently charred, topped with whatever the Pacific Northwest is doing well that week. Cafe Olli is a pizza and brunch spot on MLK that also runs a serious bread and pastry program out of the adjoining bakery. The New York Times put it on their restaurant list and the chef landed a James Beard semifinalist nod, which tracks for a neighborhood place that treats zucchini and peaches like they have something to prove.

Fratesi's is a neighborhood pizzeria, the kind that feels like it's been on the corner since before you were born, even though it landed in downtown Miami fairly recently. The bar pies come out so thin they look drawn on, with cheese all the way to the edge, which leaves crust-skeptics with nothing to complain about. Stained glass lamps hang over springy booths, and the tahini caesar is the one salad people will order on purpose.

Three pizza styles under one roof: puffy Neapolitan, fried montanara, and the thin Roman scrocchiarella. This Palms pizzeria is the grown-up version of a beloved Pico-Robertson original, now with a proper sit-down dining room and a menu that stretches to supplì and broccolini with bagna cauda. The kind of neighborhood spot that gets written about in cities far from Los Angeles, so booking ahead is wise.

An Italian diner doing a spaghetti Western impression, Cosmica landed on the New York Times Restaurant List for 2025 and earns the attention. The Central Ninth spot is big, kitschy, and photogenic in a way that stops short of feeling calculated, with housemade pastas, wood-fired Neapolitan pies, and a clam pizza finished with salsa verde that quietly steals the table. The "House Puffy Bread" arrives straight from the oven, hot enough to make you burn your fingers.

A wide, foldable New York-style slice in a city that usually wants to put mango on everything takes a certain conviction. Miami Slice is a no-reservations counter in the Arts District, fast and focused, with a short menu of recognizable pies and a crust that stays crisp without going brittle. The line moves constantly between people eating in and people walking out. 50 Top Pizza placed it third in the country for slices.

A long counter, an open kitchen, and a pizzaiolo working the back of the room like the whole thing is a performance: this Chinatown strip-mall pizza shop has no interest in blending into its surroundings. The neo-Neapolitan dough is light with a properly blistered edge, and the menu stays tight enough that everything on it seems to mean something. Named among 50 Top Pizza USA's excellent pizzerias.

Good Pie is an Arts District pizza shop that can't commit to one style, so it does New York slices, thick Detroit rectangles, and a thinner Long Island grandma pie. You can eat at the sidewalk window like it's a Tuesday, or take the nicer dining room and order a pitcher of sangria like it isn't. Lunch is easy here, gluten-free pies are on the menu, and nobody will make you pick a lane.

A slice counter at the entrance means you can be in and out before the circular bar crowd even finds a seat. Pizza Rock is a big, loud, rock-and-roll pizza shop spread across multiple rooms, with booths for two and communal tables for everyone else. The menu runs several regional styles, and the staff can actually explain the differences. Named among 50 Top Pizza USA's excellent pizzerias, it draws a crowd that didn't want to eat on the Strip.

The name comes from "shokunin," a Japanese word for total devotion to a craft, which tells you something about how seriously Sean Brock takes his pizza. This Neapolitan slice spot in Riverside Village has a domed wood-fired oven imported from Italy and a glass-walled prep area where you can clock exactly where the cheese and cured meats came from. The crust is cold-fermented slow and bakes up light enough that you'll order a second. Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The wood-fired oven sits open to the room in a space that feels more like a late-night bar than a pizza parlor, which tells you something about the crowd. This is a Neapolitan pizza spot with a serious reputation, ranked in the 50 Top Pizza USA and a James Beard semifinalist. The dough is the whole argument here, and the team has been refining it long enough that regulars tend to skip the menu.

The grilled pizza here goes directly onto the flame, which does something to the crust that an oven simply cannot: a char-edged, smoke-threaded base that's thin enough to feel light but sturdy enough to carry its toppings. This is a full-menu Italian restaurant, not a slice shop, so come ready for pasta and roasted vegetables too. The room is bright, the pace is brisk, and the drinks list is short but chosen with care.

Wood-fired pizza in a Little River spot that feels like a party someone forgot to announce, concrete floors, dim lighting, and a natural wine list long enough to make you forget you came for the pizza. The pies come out of a wood-burning oven behind the bar with char that means it, and the crust cold-ferments for two days before it ever meets a topping. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand. Reservations are a good idea.

Detroit-style pizza with a self-described tagline of "pretty good pizza," which is either very honest or very good marketing. The ultra-thick, crispy-edged pies come from a pandemic pop-up that grew into a permanent spot, and the narrow space flows out to a sidewalk parklet. The drinks menu is almost entirely under ten dollars, with wine notes like "kissing a guy with a mustache." The New York Times named it among Seattle's 25 best restaurants right now.

The dough here sits somewhere between New York and New Haven, fermented with a sourdough-and-commercial-yeast blend that produces a crust that shatters at the edge and stays open and airy inside. This is a pizza shop in the Lower Haight, and it's one of the tougher reservations in the city right now. On Tuesdays the kitchen roasts a half chicken that the New York Times found worth mentioning in the same breath as Zuni Café.

The stone hearth oven sits open to the dining room, so you can watch the pies come together while you wait. This is a casual pizza and pasta spot with a very Tucson idea of Italian-American cooking, blending Sonoran flavors into the repertoire with a straight face. Birria on a pizza, red chile folded into an Alfredo, a cannoli served as a taco. The room runs warm and woody, the vibe is neighborhood, and nothing on the menu takes itself too seriously.

Marvin is a pizzeria on Wickenden Street that dresses like the slice joint of your childhood, checkered paper and bar stools included, then quietly gets weird with the menu. There's a pepperoni negroni, a house pizza wine, and frozen custard waiting by the door for anyone with room left. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Northeast, which the high tops do a good job of hiding.

A coal-fired Neapolitan pizza shop a short walk from Coors Field, Marco's holds the only certification from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana in Colorado, which is basically a notarized letter from Naples saying the pies are correct. The crust is blistered and chewy in the right proportions. Substitutions on the Neapolitan pies are not allowed, which will sort the room into people who appreciate that and people who ask anyway.

The booths at this coal-oven pizza parlor are so carved up with initials and signatures that the wood itself is basically a guestbook for the last several decades of Greenwich Village. Whole pies only, thin-crusted and charred just right, no slices and no exceptions. The room is loud, cheerful, and not trying to impress anyone, which is precisely why it has been full since before most of its customers were born.

Wood-fired pizzas rotate with the season at this Italian-American restaurant on a tree-lined stretch of Winter Park, where vaulted ceilings, exposed brick, and caramel leather booths make the room feel like someone spent real money on "rustic." The kitchen leans heavily on the pizza oven, and the toppings tend toward the unexpected. A Michelin Selected restaurant, it pulls a reliably well-dressed crowd that fills the central bar as steadily as the booths.

The wood-fired oven sits dead center in the room, which tells you everything about priorities at this intimate pizzeria in the Warehouse Arts District. Naturally leavened crusts, house-stretched mozzarella, and locally sourced toppings keep the menu short and the focus narrow. The minimalist space, warm lighting, and low hum of a neighborhood crowd make it feel like someone's very well-appointed living room, if that living room produced excellent pizza.

Loui's is a Hazel Park pizza parlor with wood paneling, a dining room that hasn't been redecorated since sometime before most of its customers were born, and a ceiling hung with chianti bottles signed by diners, like a very boozy guest book. The Detroit-style squares come out thick and airy under a crown of caramelized cheese. Order a pitcher, settle into the dim, and don't plan on being productive afterward.

Bungalow is the Logan Square brewpub where the beer runs on wild yeast and the wine is made with as little intervention as the law allows. Tavern-style thin-crust pizza shows up on Tuesdays, cut in squares, but the toppings come from regional farms and the sauces wander off script. Order a pepperoni pie here and you'll feel like you've missed the point. The Beard folks named the beverage program a semifinalist in 2024.

Sourdough crusts fired in a hot electric oven, topped with combinations like chorizo, romesco, and Castelvetrano olives, are the organizing principle at this maximalist pizzeria inside Mercantile on Morris. The warehouse bones and exposed brick give it a casual, stylish feel, but the kitchen is serious. Meatballs and desserts pull their weight too. A Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard semifinalist nod for Best New Restaurant add some context to the hype.

Bagels hang in metal racks draped with white sheets, a nod to the coin-operated laundry this place used to be. Now it's an all-day pizza and bagel shop on Balboa, mornings given over to coffee from Grand Coffee and a solid bagel lineup that runs from egg to rye, with schmears folded through green onion or spiked with Calabrian chiles. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the top bagels in the Bay Area, and a Top 100 restaurant pick followed.

The wood-burning oven is the whole point here, and it runs hot enough that pies come out of it faster than the counter moves. Stellina is a casual neo-Neapolitan pizzeria in Union Market territory, with colorful tiles, red stools, and the kind of blistered, chewy crust that makes "simple counter service" feel like a charitable description. The fritti is a good opening move, and the tiramisu won't embarrass anyone. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand.

Wood-fired pizza from a pair who met slinging pies at Roberta's in New York, now settled into a bright spot in the Montecito Country Mart. Bettina is a pizzeria with a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a slow-fermented dough that shows up in every crust. Pastas get the same attention, and the oven moonlights in baked goods, so leaving without a brown-butter chocolate chip cookie is the kind of mistake you only make once.

Allday is a minimalist neighborhood pizzeria on Speedway, turning out New York-style pies with a lightly charred, still-chewy crust and a tangy sauce. The Pep & Pepp stacks tiny pepperonis under diced pepperoncini, which is about as much suspense as a pizza needs. A six-slice sampler arrives on one tray for the undecided. It has turned up on The Infatuation's best pizza in America list.

A complimentary splash of bubbles lands on your table the moment you sit down, which sets the tone nicely for a Montrose pizza and pasta spot that's got more going on than it lets on. The wood-fired oven does most of the talking, and the honey cake with crème fraîche gelato has a way of making people miss their plans. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, and the wine list is longer than you'd expect.

The sourdough starter here has been around forever, which you can taste in the blistered, fermented crust on every pie. This is a casual Neapolitan-style pizza shop off the Strip where an 8-inch runs under $10 and a 14-inch tops out around $22. The Vampire Bread, slathered in garlic ranch, has its own following. Order a few things for the table and split the bill; nobody leaves feeling like they made a mistake.

High ceilings and big windows flood this New American neighborhood restaurant with afternoon light, and candlelit booths handle the evening shift. The rotating dinner menu runs from clams to pasta to brick chicken, and the bar pours cocktails serious enough to justify a second round. Lunch added focaccia sandwiches and grandma-style pizza slices, which turned a quietly beloved dinner spot into something the whole city suddenly had opinions about.

A.K. is a counter-service pizza shop on Martin Luther King Jr Way, where a sign above the register promises a dough show and the crust follows through, with a charred, dry crunch outside and a pillowy rip within. The plain pie tastes like a Manhattan street corner, minus the humidity and the trash bags. The Infatuation put it on its list of the best pizza places in America, so expect a line of people with strong opinions about crust.

This is the Wooster Street pizzeria that made New Haven argue about whether "apizza" is a word, and the pies still come out of a coal-fired oven with a charred, smoky bottom and a crust that stays rigid when you lift a slice. The white clam pie is the famous one, briny and heavy on garlic. Plan on a line down the block, eaten at plain tables, with no one in sight fussing over a wine list.

Kinchley's is a New Jersey tavern that treats the bar pie as a birthright, with a thin, crackery crust, sauce that runs right to the edge, and cheese that blisters into little craters. Friday night belongs to families who've been showing up for generations and greet the servers like cousins. It's casual and cash-register cheap, and the toppings get weird in a way purists will mutter about, like creamed spinach.

Wayfarer Tavern is a pizza place in Dayton, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati, with a thin, square-cut tavern-style pie that borrows crisped edges from Detroit and New England. The toppings read like the contents of a church potluck table: pickles, potato chips, ranch, and a Korean corn cheese riff. It sounds like a dare, and the Infatuation lists it among the best pizza places in America.

A disco ball spins over the dining room at this Graham Avenue pizzeria, where the thin-crust pies share the bill with house pasta and focaccia made in the open kitchen. The Italian wine list runs to two pages of sparkling alone, which tells you something about the ambitions here. The Calabrian soppressata and hot honey on the Diavola have a following. Michelin has it in the guide.

A one-room pizza kitchen tucked into Upcountry Maui where the chef mills his own flour and buys whole animals from a local farm before breaking them down for the toppings. The pies lean wood-fired and seasonal, with whatever Kula farms are offering that week doing most of the heavy lifting. House-made gelato closes the meal quietly but memorably. A James Beard semifinalist, which makes a lot of sense once you smell the oven from the parking lot.

New York-style pies with a slightly puffed, almost Neapolitan edge are the calling card at this pizzeria in Baltimore's Little Italy. The dough is made by hand, the ingredients skew Italian, and the menu rounds out with salads and baked fillings. The family behind it rebuilt after Katrina, which perhaps explains why the place feels like it has something to prove. Ranked 44th on 50 Top Pizza USA.

The red door on Moore Street opens into a loud, wood-fired pizza shop that somehow became the definitive argument for Bushwick's whole self-image. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the pies earn the pilgrimage: thin, blistered, unapologetically themselves. The room is industrial and a little ramshackle, the staff looks like they're in three different bands, and the wait can be long enough to reconsider your life choices. Order ahead and take a box home.

The wood-fired oven does most of the talking at this compact Santa Monica pizzeria, turning out perfectly blistered pies with paper-thin crusts and a pound cake finished with honey and whipped cream that tends to upstage everything before it. Pasta and seasonal produce from the farmers' market round out the menu. Counter seats put you close enough to watch the whole operation, which is half the reason to sit there. Weekend brunch draws a crowd.

Monzú is a sit-down Italian restaurant in a Flamingo Road strip mall, where the red sauce tradition gets politely ignored. The menu leans Sicilian, with lamb croquettes wrapped in lemon leaves and a stack of crepes baked with meat sauce and béchamel. The rectangular pizzas rise from a starter said to be 300 years old, which makes it older than most of the city's zoning. Dinner-date prices, nothing you need a jacket for.

A casual East Downtown wine bar and pizza spot where the menu shifts with the seasons but fennel sausage pizza and rigatoni Bolognese tend to anchor things. The vegetable dishes punch above their station, like a cabbage salad in pistachio-apricot agrodolce that sounds like a dare and tastes like a plan. Sister to Nancy's Hustle next door, which means the neighborhood is doing just fine.

A Neapolitan pizza shop tucked into a strip mall on Curry Ford Road, Pizza Bruno runs a wood-fired oven hot and a menu that takes genuine swings: one pie pairs fresh blueberries with mozzarella, fontina, honey, and bacon, and another makes the pineapple debate feel basically settled. The room is small and bright, with a neighborhood counter-service feel that keeps things casual while the pizza itself is doing something more ambitious.

The chef comes from a line of Italian bakers, and the pizza crust at this Peoria trattoria and pizzeria makes that lineage hard to miss, with blistered char and a chew that most Phoenix spots across town can't match. The menu runs well past pizza, into house-made porchetta, light gnocchi with cheese-heavy sauces, and fresh stuffed pastas. For a neighborhood that usually gets everyone else's leftovers, this one was built here from scratch.

Red Dwarf is a dive bar in a tiny strip mall that moonlights as a tiki lounge, which explains the glowing glass orbs and pufferfish lamps. Locals pack the zig-zagging, Tetris-shaped room for $4 pints of a local lager and thick, rectangular Detroit-style pizza. Tight quarters mean you'll be debating the pineapple-and-jalapeño pie with strangers by the second round.

The dough ferments for a full week before anyone slides a pizza into the oven, which is an unusual amount of patience for a shoe-box takeout counter in suburban Chicago. The result is a tavern-style pie where even the center squares crack, the sauce runs deep, and the Italian sausage stays juicy. The New York Times put it on their Chicago list. Get there early on weekends; it sells out by 5:30.

A neighborhood café, bakery, and grocery that's been around forever near the University of Arizona, Time Market does the wood-fired pizza and artisanal bread thing without making you feel like you wandered into a lifestyle brand. Exposed beams, polished floors, good natural light. The kind of place where grabbing lunch and leaving with a bottle of wine feels completely normal.

This is a downtown Fremont Street slice joint that doubles as a shrine to Evel Knievel, with memorabilia on the walls and a Knievel pinball machine to keep you busy while the oven works. The New York-style slices are big, the crust is crisp, and the candied bacon is there if you want it. The whole pies are pricey, but an eight-dollar slice and a beer is the move. Nobody here is sober enough to question the motorcycle mural.

The pasta is made in-house every morning, which sets the tone for the rest of the menu. Locale is a meat-forward Italian American restaurant where red sauce is taken seriously and the charcuterie board arrives before you've had a chance to look around. Dry-aged steak and bone-in short ribs share space with eggplant Parmigiana, and the kitchen sources from small American farms alongside Italian imports. Out on Blue Diamond, far from the Strip's noise.