It’s a very good time to like thin pizza. |
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“Tavern-style” pizza is everywhere now |
As someone who’s been writing about food trends for over a decade, my primary takeaway has been their reactionary nature. The boom in splashy dining and caviar-filled excess has been followed by a contraction of concepts and an impulse toward streamlined affordability. The era of “we fired all our pastry chefs” panna cottas gives way to dessert maximalism, in which large-format sweets become destination dining. Heck, fancy pints of hard-packed ice cream even stopped being cutting-edge, allowing fancy froyo and soft serve to ascend as the new “cool” frozen treat.
Naturally, pizza must fall into the same cycle. Detroit-style pizza, with its lore about highly specific pans with origins in the auto industry, became the trendy rising-star of the national pizza scene in the mid-to-late 2010s, turning diners everywhere onto thick, fluffy sheets of pizza. The appeal was that the toppings, the most important of which was the cheese, went all the way to the edge, resulting in pillowy, focaccia-like slices with a border of burnished, crispy bits, like a better version of Chicago deep dish. Alas, as with hot honey drizzled onto slices of pepperoni pizza, the novelty factor has mostly worn off: Detroit-style pizza is now very “been there, eaten that” — still delicious but less exciting as far as new pizza shop openings are concerned. And just as the backlash to body positivity has also recently proven: What comes after thick is thin. Very thin, in fact!
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In keeping track of restaurant openings across the country, what I’ve seen over and over again in the past few years has been “tavern-style” pizza, promising cracker-thin pies that are typically cut into grids as opposed to triangle slices. These include spots such as Keepers in New York City; La Merna in Washington, D.C.; One Trick Pony in Forth Worth, Texas; Proof in Portland, Oregon; Tillie’s Tavern Pizza in Wheat Ridge, Colorado; and Zarella in Chicago. Even NYC’s Ops, which is renowned for its more Neapolitan-style pizzas, started selling thin Tavernetta pizzas when it opened its second location last year. No surprise, the style was well-represented in Food & Wine’s recent list of the best pizza in the country.
Though parts of the Northeast such as New Jersey and Boston also claim their own tavern or bar pizza traditions, these newer tavern-style spots generally cite some inspiration or affiliation with Chicago, St. Louis, or the broader Midwest. For some owners, part of it is seeking to dispel the misconception that the region’s only contribution to the pizza conversation is Chicago deep dish. (Deep-dish is, according to conversations I had with some pizza makers from the region, controversial and not properly representative.) Of course, it’s also been the year of the tavern across the national restaurant scene, with restaurant owners trying to capture the nostalgic vibe that’s best conveyed by the “tavern.”
You can read my piece about the tavern-style pizza moment on Eater. |
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