Silicon Valley Pizza Week, organized by the Weeklys Media Group, of which Metro is a part, runs Jan. 29–Feb. 8. Also this week: a taste of Indian pizza, a history of Silicon Valley pizza companies and a list of Pizza Week participants. Visit SiliconValleyPizzaWeek.com for more, or download the Pizza Week App.
Remember cold pizza with warm beer, at dawn, after a late-night party? Or that first bite of charred pizza bianca in Italy that revised your entire concept of the savory pie? Or the life-saving delivery guy showing up with two enormous pies loaded with pepperoni and oozing mozzarella on Oscar Night?
Under almost any circumstances everybody loves pizza, and the reason is no mystery: flavor and affordability. Everything else is just fine-tuning. You can eat it with your hands. It’s highly interactive, since a whole pie is designed to share. You can top it with almost anything with flavor. Pizza lives to fight inflation.
There’s no denying the universal appeal of its crust baked at super high heat. Think of the crust as both a delivery system and a flavor-intensifier in its own right. Brick oven or wood-fired, tomato sauce-based or strewn with seasonal veggies and custom-cured meats, thick and chewy or thin and crispy—pizza comes in many styles. It can be carefully crafted at a sit-down restaurant, delivered to the doorstep, or pulled out of the freezer and popped into the oven.
That’s Amore
“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore,” crooned Dean Martin to a ’50s generation of foodies newly excited by pizza. The song was alleged to be a good-natured parody of Neapolitan organ-grinder music, spun through the boozy vocals of a genuine Italian American singer. Certainly pizza’s origins were humble as street music, and even today many metropolitan street corners are perfumed by the scent of garlic and oregano wafting from pizza trucks catering to just about anybody anytime.
Pizza entered the American diet in a serious way along with waves of post World War II soldiers who’d been stationed in Italy and never got over the tomato sauce and cheese classics of Italian cuisine. Especially pizza, hustled by Italian immigrants who settled in New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia. Every big city in the northeast seemed to boast a Little Italy, where pizza pie was sold on street corners and cafes.
Just how did pizza go from street food to an upscale necessity? From low brow to haute cuisine? Consider all the positive attributes of pizza. Ease. Universal comfort appeal. Low cost. Filling. Pizza is a go-to center of the American diet, growing from its working-class Neapolitan origins to over 80,000 pizza restaurants across the country today. At least 15% of Americans eat pizza on any given day of the week. Pizza is, in a word, big.
Signature toppings started with pepperoni, salami, sausage, mushrooms, onions, peppers and anchovies. All liberally topped with gooey, melted mozzarella cheese. But it didn’t stop there.
Today there’s not a town, crossroads, village or city without pizza. Lots of it. And it continues to grow, branching out with unusual, even exotic toppings like coconut, banana, kiwi, potato and sour cream, arugula, ranch dressing, even pickles. You won’t find these in my house, but the myriad spinoffs and rococo toppings definitely have their followers.
We can date the entry of pizza into the celebrity world sometime in the late 1980s. Enter Wolfgang Puck, with his trend-setting Spago in Los Angeles, and Alice Waters, whose Chez Panisse in Berkeley refined pizza into a designer luxury with organic toppings. Spago’s movers and shakers (Joan Collins, Johnny Carson) couldn’t get enough of California cuisine maestro Puck’s innovative smoked salmon and caviar pizza, served with sour cream. Duck sausage was also one of Puck’s innovations, through which pizza gained even broader appeal as a culinary choice and not simply a fistful of calories. In the late ’80s Puck’s pizzas became a reliably delicious staple in the realm of frozen pizza. We could dine like a celebrity in our own homes.
Style Influencers
There are at least a dozen recognizable pizza styles, but a few occupy the top tier. Neapolitan. Fired ultra hot, these pizzas rock charred doughy crusts, anchovies and olives, and lots of mozzarella.
New York style is often cut into large slices, eaten folded in half. Much thinner than Neapolitan, and lighter on the sauce. Sicilian style is doughy with a squishy crust shaped into a square. Not much cheese and lots of sauce. Chicago deep dish pizza immediately captured a huge patronage. Thick as a deep dish pie, it morphed into another popular shape when the crusty edges were stuffed with yet more cheese and other toppings, also added as fillings to the edges. Detroit style—cooked in a rectangular pan and sporting a chewy crust that resembles focaccia—also pleases fans of thicker pies.
The yeast-free crust of St. Louis style pizza makes it ultra thin—like a big round cracker—often uniquely topped with three cheeses, always including Swiss and cheddar.
California-style pizza is famed for expanding the whole idea of toppings, from wild nettles to smoked shrimp, cream cheese, BBQ pork, chicken, artichoke hearts, you name it.
Local Slices
Local chefs seem to have perfected the something-for-everyone pizza. At Palo Alto’s Terún, pizzas can come topped with tuna, truffle oil, gorgonzola—even pears, walnuts and zucchini.
Franco and Maico Campilongo, two food entrepreneurs from southern Italy, came here 13 years ago and have grown their Neapolitan-style pizzeria Terún into an acclaimed Palo Alto favorite with such power diners as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Oprah Winfrey. Even the Food Network considers this authentic Italian pizza palace and restaurant one of the top seven pizzerias in the country.
“The list of world-changers who have enjoyed eating at Terún is long,” co-founder Maico Campilongo observed. The signature pie in this shop is incredibly simple: tomato sauce made with San Marzano tomatoes, ultra creamy fior di latte mozzarella and spicy cured sausage.
On Santana Row, Pizza Antica specializes in thin-crust artisanal pies topped with farm-fresh ingredients. So crazy are patrons about Antica’s pizza specialties that the house creates and markets its own brand of wood-fired frozen pizzas topped with classic items from four-cheese to pepperoni as well as heirloom potato and white truffle oil, asparagus and preserved lemon.
Award-winning A Slice of New York offers hole-in-the-wall ambience amid its booming takeout trade for fans of the East Coast pizza vibe. From its locations in Sunnyvale and San Jose, this made-from-scratch establishment serves up big, thick Sicilian pies smothered with meat-intensive toppings, as well as thin-crust Neapolitan beauties, all perfumed by fresh garlic, basil and Parmesan. These differing styles both have devoted followers.
Always a favorite, Pizza My Heart has grown far beyond its seaside origin 40 years ago in Capitola, where the big innovation was pizza by the slice. Yes, that was a breakout idea four decades ago. Owner Chuck Hammers describes the origin as “a little beach shack.” Now with more than 25 locations in the greater Bay Area, this reliable pie shop still delivers the spicy goods. Our favorite is the Figgy Piggy, loaded with bacon, feta, black figs and sage for a sweet ’n’ salty flavor and unctuous olive oil mouthfeel.
Think of pizza as a table ready to be spread with intriguing flavors, or just plain comfort toppings. And maybe that’s the real secret to pizza’s enduring popularity. We can top it with the items we most love, pick up a slice and then inhale all of those favorite flavors in a single, hot, gooey bite.
