The Best Pizzas in America

101 Best Pizzas in America
101 Best Pizzas in America

Pizza! If you grew up obsessed with it - postgame pizza, movie-night pizza, baby-sitting pizza, college dorm pizza, New York-, New Haven-, Neapolitan-, deep-dish-, St. Louis-, Detroit-style pizza, pizza! - and pursued that American passion for cheese, sauce, and bread with an adult fascination for seeking the best slice, the finest pie, the Platonic Neapolitan, then the idea of naming America's best is likely contentious. Who serves America's best pizza? "My favorite spot, of course!" Americans will declare. Yes, pizza is tough to rank responsibly. But once again, that's just what The Daily Meal set out to do.

RELATED: Click here to see the complete List of the 101 Best Pizzas in America


One of the problems with even the most well-intentioned best pizza lists is their length, or lack of length actually. Lists mentioning 10, 15, 25, and even The Daily Meal's own collection of 35 places last year just don't do the topic justice. There are too many great places that deserve consideration and mention. Out of necessity (and sanity), writers have and often do exclude long lists of suggestions from locals, friends, and other experts. Some pick geographic representatives and select what they think are the best of each. And others have taken to declaring a list of the country's best pizza to be impossible, noting as food writer Steven Coomes did recently, that the quality of pizza is "tied to particular ingredients chosen that day and put into the hands of a particular pizza maker." "To borrow a word from the wine industry," Coomes explained, "It's about the terroir."

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To come up with candidates last year, The Daily Meal's editors racked their collective pizza memory, consulted respected texts and online sources, sought out old-school Formica-table joints and brazen newcomers, considered stalwarts of the country's two pizza capitals, New York City and… cough, Chicago (but not so closely that we couldn't look beyond them), then asked members of our esteemed panel to add suggestions. To last year's 140 resulting pizzas we added an additional 300 storied spots. These were both newly researched and those that pizza experts (both recognized and self-proclaimed) submitted after last year's best pizza place was viewed far and across the Web.

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We researched and called each pizzeria, identifying signature pies or best-sellers, and in the absence of them or the willingness of the pizzeria to comply, selected the margherita as a baseline or made an educated decision as to which pie to feature for voting.

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From those some 400 pizza spots, we turned to a panel of experts to narrow a list of America's 101 best pizzas, considering spots from Western states, the Southwest and Texas, the Midwest, the South, the Northeast, and New York City - a still formidable task. Which is why we invited more panelists, enlisting twice as many experts from just as diverse a cross-section across America to cast hundreds of votes. This panel of 46 American chefs, restaurant critics, bloggers, writers, and pizza authorities, most of whom, besides Thrillist's Adam Robb, Jason Feirman of IDreamOfPizza, Peter Reinhart of PizzaQuest.com, Marc Horowitz of HiddenBoston.com, and Nicole Danna, a food blogger for Clean Plate Charlie, preferred to remain anonymous.

What did we discover? What we think is a pretty great list. It turns out that there are great pizzas being made in cities across the country.

These are the top 5 pizzas in America for 2013:

Pizzeria Mozza
Pizzeria Mozza

#5 Pizzeria Mozza, Los Angeles, Calif. (Squash Blossoms, Tomato, Burrata)

Renowned baker and chef Nancy Silverton teamed up with Italian culinary moguls Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich to open Osteria Mozza, a Los Angeles hot spot where the famous clientele pales in comparison to the innovative, creative fare. The pizzeria, which is attached to the main restaurant, offers a variety of Italian specialties, from antipasti to bruschetta, but the Neapolitan-style pizzas steal the show. Their list of 21 pies ranges from $11 for a simple aglio e olio, a classic cheese pizza, to $23 for a more unique pie with squash blossoms, tomato, and burrata cheese - a delicious and simple pizza that transports through the quality and nuance of its ingredients. So it's no surprise that Batali and Bastianich have taken a stab at duplicating the success of this model pizzeria, opening in Newport Beach, Singapore (!), and soon, San Diego.

#4 Una Pizza Napoletana, San Francisco (Margherita)
(Pictured at top of page)

When Anthony Mangieri, pizzaiolo for the East Village's Una Pizza Napoletana, closed in 2009 "to make a change," move West, and open somewhere he could get "a chance to use his outrigger canoe and mountain bike more often," it was the ultimate insult to New Yorkers. You're taking one of the city's favorite Neapolitan pizzerias, defecting to a temperate climate, to people who denigrate New York's Mexican food? So you can canoe and mountain bike? Traitor! Good for Mangieri, and good for San Franciscans, who inherited one of the country's best Neapolitan pies (if only Wednesday through Saturday, 5 p.m. until they're "out of dough"). A thin crust with chewy cornicione, a sauce that's tart and alive, an appropriate ratio of cheese... you could almost imagine yourself at the pantheon to pizza in Naples Da Michele, a place where the pizza is poetry and pizza poetry is on the wall. Mangieri harkens that same ethos on his website - check out the pizza poem "Napoli" - and delivers the edible version to his patrons. There are only five pies, all $25 (a $5 hike since last year), plus a special Saturday-only pie, the Apollonia, made with eggs, Parmigiano-Reggiano, buffalo mozzarella, salami, extra-virgin olive oil, basil, garlic, sea salt, and black pepper. But when you're this close to godliness, you don't need extras. Keep it simple with the margherita (San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, extra-virgin olive oil ,fresh basil, sea salt, tomato sauce) and know the good.

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Pizzeria Bianco
Pizzeria Bianco

#3 Pizzeria Bianco, Phoenix, (Marinara)

"There's no mystery to my pizza," Bronx native Chris Biacgnco was quoted as saying in The New York Times. "Sicilian oregano, organic flour, San Marzano tomatoes, purified water, mozzarella I learned to make at Mike's Deli in the Bronx, sea salt, fresh yeast cake and a little bit of yesterday's dough. In the end great pizza, like anything else, is all about balance. It's that simple.'' Try telling that to the legions of pizza pilgrims who have made trip to the storied Phoenix pizza spot he opened more than 20 years ago. The restaurant serves not only addictive thin-crust pizzas but also fantastic antipasto (involving wood-oven-roasted vegetables), perfect salads, and homemade country bread. The wait, once routinely noted as one of the worst for food in the country, has been improved by Pizzeria Bianco opening for lunch, and the opening of Trattoria Bianco, the pizza prince of Arizona's Italian restaurant in the historic Town & Country Shopping Center (about 10 minutes from the original. This is another case where any pie will likely be better than most you've had in your life (that Rosa with red onions and pistachios!), but the signature Marinara will recalibrate your pizza baseline forever: tomato sauce, oregano, and garlic (no cheese).

Di Fara Pizza
Di Fara Pizza

#2 Di Fara, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Di Fara Classic Pie)

Domenico DeMarco is a local celebrity, having owned and operated Di Fara since 1964. Dom cooks both New York and Sicilian-style pizza Wednesday through Sunday (noon to 4:30 p.m., and from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.) for hungry New Yorkers and tourists willing to wait in long lines, and brave the free-for-all that is the Di Fara counter experience. Yes, you're better off getting a whole pie than shelling out for the $5 slice. Yes, it's a trek, and sure, Dom goes through periods where the underside of the pizza can trend toward overdone, but when he's on, Di Fara can make a very strong case for being America's best pizza. If you want to understand why before visiting, watch the great video about Di Fara called, The Best Thing I Ever Done. You can't go wrong with the classic round or square cheese pie (topped with oil-marinated hot peppers, which you can ladle on at the counter if you elbow in), but the menu's signature is the Di Fara Classic Pie: mozzarella, Parmesan, plum tomato sauce, basil, sausage, peppers, mushroom, onion, and of course, a drizzle of olive oil by Dom.

Frank Pepe's Pizza
Frank Pepe's Pizza

#1 Frank Pepe's, New Haven, Conn. (White Clam Pie)

If you want to discuss the loaded topic of America's best pizza with any authority, you have to make a pilgrimage to this legendary New Haven pizzeria. Frank Pepe opened his doors in Wooster Square in New Haven, Conn., in 1925, offering classic Napoletana-style pizza. After immigrating to the United States in 1909 at the age of 16 from Italy, Pepe took odd jobs before opening his restaurant (now called "The Spot" next door to the larger operation). Since its conception, Pepe's has opened an additional seven locations.

What should you order at this checklist destination? Two words: clam pie ("No muzz!"). This is a Northeastern pizza genre unto its own, and Pepe's is the best of them all - freshly shucked, briny littleneck clams, an intense dose of garlic, olive oil, oregano, and grated Parmesan atop a charcoal-colored crust. The advanced move? Clam pie with bacon. Just expect to wait in line if you get there after 11:30 a.m. on a weekend.

Click Here to see the Complete List of the 101 Best Pizzas in America and see which of your local spots made the list!


-Arthur Bovino, The Daily Meal