Only Pizza

In the United States, a pizza crust it’s brand of origin. Thin pizza crust means California, thicker is the signal of cooking in New Haven heated by coal ovens and the thick layer of dough and high crust implies an origin from Chicago. The emergence of this unique version of the pizza was not so much about the chefs' experiments in the kitchen as it was about historical events.

CHICAGO STYLE DEEP DISH PIZZA

During the Great Migration, which began in 1880, some Italian immigrants settled in Chicago. Poor Catholics, some without even an education, faced economic, political, and social barriers in the United States. However, already in 1920, their number was approximately sixty thousand people, the third largest population in the United States at that time, and Chicago became their "new home".

The advent of Chicago pizza was a happy consequence of the unfortunate economic and cultural shifts during World War II. The following ingredients were used to make the dough: Wheat flour, yeast, corn oil and salt, the pizza filling could be meat or vegetable. Two businessmen (Ike Sewell and Rick Riccardo) rushed to satisfy the appetite of the military, who back home. In 1943, they opened Pizzeria Uno, where they first served pizza (deep-dish pie) with a thick layer of dough. The dish was an unclassical flat pizza with a thin layer of dough and toppings, covered with a thick layer of cheese on top, but more like a pie. The pizza had a thick crust and was baked in a round, deep container.

Pizzeria Uno created a new world of pizza, and the pizza pie quickly gained love, becoming one of the most popular types of pizza in the United States.

The pizza pie is an Italian-American experience through the lens of Chicago, this dish is a unity of place and time, which deserves respect and the right to exist.

NY STYLE PIZZA

A pizza characterized by large slices with a thin crust. These pizzas are often sold in wide slices for the road. It has quite soft crusts, crispy around the edges,which need to be bent in half to eat. This style originated in New York in the early 1900s and it’s used today in the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

The first pizzeria in America was founded by Gennaro Lombardi, by an immigrant from Naples in New York in the "little Italia" neighborhood in 1905. Lombardi opened a grocery store in 1897 and eight years later was licensed to sell pizza in New York State. His employee, Antonio Totonno Pero, began making pizza that sells for five cents a slice. In 1924, Totonno left Lombardi and opened his own pizzeria on Coney Island called Totonno's.