Best pizza styles

New York slice▲ Rising

Folded in half at a subway-grate speed-walk, dripping orange grease onto wax paper, this is the pizza that taught America how to eat on the move. Its foldable, wide, floppy-yet-structured slice became a civic identity — everyone from cabbies to Sinatra swears by their corner joint. It ranks at the top because it's the default setting for pizza itself, the style every other style gets measured against.story2

added by IJR

Neapolitan▲ Rising

Born in Naples and blessed by the UN as intangible cultural heritage, this is the pizza that started it all — a leopard-spotted, 90-second blast in a 900-degree wood oven, soupy center and all. It changed the game by proving less is more: San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, basil, done. It earns its spot as the ur-text, the original scripture every pizzaiolo eventually has to reckon with.

added by IJRin 3 rankings

Detroit style▲ Rising

Baked in old automotive parts trays, this thick, caramelized-cheese-edge rectangle turned a factory-town shortcut into a national obsession over the last decade. The move of saucing on top after baking, plus that frico-crisp cheese lace along the pan's edge, rewired what people thought 'deep' pizza could taste like. It's climbing this list fast because it out-innovated Chicago at its own thick-crust game while staying weirdly craveable.

added by IJR

Sicilian▲ Rising

Thick, airy, focaccia-like squares with a crisp fried-feeling bottom, Sicilian pizza is the immigrant grandmother of half the styles above it, quietly influencing Detroit and grandma slices alike. Its high-hydration dough and long proof gave American pizzerias a template for chewy, bready crust long before 'artisan' was a buzzword. It ranks solidly for being foundational without ever needing the spotlight.

added by IJR

Chicago deep dish▲ Rising

A knife-and-fork pyramid of cheese, sausage, and chunky tomato sauce stacked backwards in a buttery, pie-crust-like shell, deep dish turned pizza into a casserole and dared you to call it wrong. It became the city's culinary flex, a tourist rite of passage that takes 45 minutes to bake and longer to finish. Its place here is polarizing — beloved as a spectacle, argued over as 'real pizza' — but nobody forgets their first bite.

added by IJRin 2 rankings

New Haven apizza▼ Falling

Charred almost to blackness in coal-fired ovens at spots like Sally's and Pepe's, New Haven apizza is the cult favorite — thin, oblong, and famous for its clam pie that sounds wrong until you taste it. It never went fully mainstream, and that's the point: purists travel for it, guard it, argue about which of the three legendary shops on Wooster Street is best. It lands high on this list for sheer intensity of devotion per capita.

added by IJRin 2 rankings

Tavern thin crust▼ Falling

Cut into little squares for sharing over beers, this cracker-thin, edge-to-edge-topped pizza is the unsung Midwest bar-food MVP, born to pair with a pitcher and a pool table. It changed the calculus of pizza-as-snack, proving crust could be a vehicle for crunch rather than chew. It ranks here because it's the people's pizza — unpretentious, endlessly shareable, criminally underrated outside Chicago and St. Louis.

added by IJR

Grandma style▼ Falling

A Long Island invention meant to be the anti-restaurant pizza — thin, oiled sheet-pan dough, sauce on top of cheese, made at home by actual nonnas without a wood oven in sight. It flipped the script on what 'authentic' even means, showing that improvisation and love could out-charm tradition. Its ranking here rewards that scrappy, everywoman ingenuity — proof you don't need a pizzaiolo pedigree to make something iconic.

added by IJR