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Little Caesars' version (left) is vastly superior to Giordano's Pizza (right) and other Chicago poseurs, Thrillist insists forcefully.
Unmistakably authentic deep dish pizzas are among the Detroit classics missed out west by Nicole Rupersberg, a former local food blogger who decamped for Las Vegas early last year.
Visits and sense memories stoke the freelance writer's passion for "the REAL deep dish pizza," as she describes it at Thrillist with that emphasis.
As befits the topic, Rupersberg serves a hot, spicy, saucy Detroit vs. Chicago bake-off:
At some point in every Detroiters' life -- perhaps in his or her teenage years, maybe not until college or later -- he or she visits Chicago for the first time, and learns the devastating life lesson that "deep dish pizza" does not mean the same thing to all people
Chicago-style stuffed pizza has "fetid pools of lukewarm marinara drowning flaccid slices of wet pepperoni and rubbery cheese," writes the former Eat It Detroit blogger.
In that city, she writes with crisp bluntness, poseurs serve pies with "fetid pools of lukewarm marinara drowning flaccid slices of wet pepperoni and rubbery cheese robbed of the opportunity to bubble and brown." The crust is "so dry it puts you in serious danger of choking on each and every bite."
The merciless pizza purist calls out three popular chains: Giordano's, Lou Malnati's and Pizzeria Uno.
Savory sass keeps coming like slices at an all-you-can eat buffet:
Your Chicago-style pizza is like your Chicago-style politics: a euphemism for depravity and corruption.
Chicago's abomination is most accurately termed a "stuffed pizza." Because to call this atrocity, this marinara pot pie nightmare "deep dish" is an insult to all other deep dish pizzas in the world, especially Detroit-style deep dish -- or, as we know it, simply "deep dish," the absolute superior, most exalted and sacred of all deep dishes.
Get the idea?
Rupersberg keeps rolling like a power-slicer, writing with a heavy hand for effect. Her peppery prose includes these pungent messages for Chi-town:
- "When the sauce is on top, it isn't there to drown the rest of the pizza, encased in foot-high crust barricades and suffocating the cheese and all of the other toppings, not allowing them to see daylight until the whole thing explodes like a dead sperm whale when you cut into it."
- "Your so-called 'pizza' is atrocious. You know it, and more importantly, WE know it."
- "With Little Caesars rolling out its Detroit-style DEEP!DEEP! Dish Pizza to its 8,000 franchises across the nation last year, the days of 'deep dish pizza' being synonymous with that revolting Chicago monstrosity are over."
For some reason, we're too hungry to continue. Click the link below for more tasty fare, including the University of Detroit Mercy graduate's stirring ode to "the holistic harmony of the Detroit deep dish pizza taken in its entirety, each part playing an integral role in the symphonic composition of the finished product."
