I grew up on the fringe of Detroit, so a couple years ago, when an Evanston restaurant announced it would be selling “Detroit-style pizza,” my husband sent me a note about it. “Thought you’d want to know.”
I responded: “What’s that?”
When I saw the pizza, though, it became clear. That rectangular (aka “square”) shape; that edge of caramelized cheese, less crust than crisp; those streaks of red sauce drizzled atop the toppings: Detroit-style pizza was Buddy’s Pizza.
Since that first slice from Union Squared in Evanston, it’s become clear that Detroit-style pizza is a rising trend, both in Chicago and nationally — and for good cause. Detroit pizza is a fluffy, focaccia-style pie that has more heft and character than most of our city’s thin crust varieties, but it’s no gut-bomb casserole like its Chicago cousin.
And yes, before any of you Michiganders send angry emails, Detroit style is also the style of Shield’s and Cloverleaf and Loui’s, but before there was any of that, there was Buddy’s Rendezvous, a mom-and-pop bar at the corner of Conant Street and Six Mile Road in Detroit. It opened as a speakeasy during Prohibition, and owner Gus Guerra added pizza to the menu in 1946.
Wesley Pikula, chief operating officer of Buddy’s, said there’s some question as to whether the recipe originated with Gus’ grandmother or with Connie Piccinato, a woman who worked for Gus, but at the very least, Connie taught Gus to press the pepperoni into the dough the way her Sicilian family had. (Pikula, who’s worked for the company for 43 years and knew Connie before she died, seems to put his money on her version of the story.)
Connie put the first pizza in the oven, Pikula said, and when she did, it was in a steel pan likely purchased at one of the automotive suppliers in the neighborhood. Food service suppliers in 1946 weren’t what they are now; bakery pans weren’t the right dimensions for the pizza Buddy’s was making. So, instead, they used 8-inch-by-10-inch or 10-inch-by-14-inch pans often used as drip trays.
Those steel drip trays get part of the credit for creating the pizza’s divine crust. Done right, it’s about an inch and a half thick, with a fluffy, almost creamy, interior and a buttery, crunchy base. It’s flanked by an edge of cheese – traditionally Wisconsin brick — that’s bubbled up over the edge of the pizza and melted down the side of the pan, cooking to a deep golden brown crisp.
Gus eventually sold Buddy’s and went on to open another pizza shop — Cloverleaf — in what was then known as East Detroit (now Eastpointe). Other employees, notably Loui Tourtois Sr., opened spinoffs, including Shield’s.
Buddy’s sold again to its current owners, and in 1980, the Republican National Convention came to Detroit, and, as Pikula noted, Buddy’s sold lots of pizza to out-of-towners. The company opened several more locations (there are now 12 across Metro Detroit, with plans to go national).
But through all of that, the rest of the world — and even plenty of Detroiters — had yet to recognize this style of pizza. Fast-forward to 2009: Shawn Randazzo, a kid who started out as a Cloverleaf pizza delivery driver in 1997 and went on to buy a pizzeria with his mom a couple years later, went to the North American Pizza & Ice Cream Show in Columbus, Ohio. His Detroit-style pizza won first place.
“I was under the impression this style of pizza was everywhere,” Randazzo said. “I was sort of shocked: I’m 3½ hours from home, and there’s not one single pie like this. I started building a passion to get this kind of pizza on the map.”
The contest followed on the heels of the U.S. government’s bailout of the auto industry. “Back then, the city was getting a ton of bad press,” he said. “People called it the murder capital, there’d been a 30-year downward spiral. … But when I won first place, it really, really fueled my fire to make Detroit known for something else, something that’s great.”
Randazzo went on to win the world championship at the International Pizza Challenge in Las Vegas in 2012 and became an evangelist for the pizza. He made presentations at trade shows and started a company called Detroit Style Pizza Co., which is, yes, a pizzeria in St. Clair Shores, Mich., but also a supplier of pans and dough for other Detroit-style pizza restaurants. He said the company has trained 36 people — some from Thailand and South Korea — in the art of making square pizza.
Detroit-style pizzerias have popped up in New York, Toronto, Denver and Austin, and there are at least five here in Chicago — which we’ve ranked for your eating pleasure. Jet’s and Little Caesars, both chains started in Metro Detroit, also offer Detroit-style options.
As the popularity of Detroit-style pizza has grown, so too has the myth surrounding it. One young Chicagoan told me the pizza derived from “autoworkers in Detroit, who brought oil pans home from the factory and made pizza in them.” Not quite.
So what, exactly, defines a Detroit-style pizza? And is it truly different from Sicilian pizza?
Detroit-style pizza has its roots in Sicilian-style pizza, but it’s distinguished by the crispy cheese edge — the built-in frico, as pizza aficionado Peter Reinhart put it — and the tradition of putting the sauce on top to prevent the crust from getting soggy.
“If you can nail the crust, it really doesn’t matter what’s on top. Eighty to 90 percent of the joy comes from the crust,” said Reinhart, whose latest cookbook, “Perfect Pan Pizza,” is due out next year from Ten Speed Press. “I think that’s part of why (Detroit-style pizza) is finding its 15 minutes of fame — and I think it’s going to be a lot longer than 15 minutes.”
Up above, check out our roundup of our favorite Detroit-style pizza in Chicago.
Twitter @dayjenn
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