There are roughly 76,000 pizzerias in the United States, and for most of the last century they sold some version of the same few pies. That is no longer true. The country now sorts itself into two loose camps: the traditionalists, who guard a style down to the oven temperature, and the innovators, who treat a pizza as a personal story. Both camps are opening new places, and both are behind the styles below.
Here is what is changing, style by style, with a pizzeria on our map where you can taste each one.
The New York pie, rebuilt from scratch
New York still sets the pace, but the new wave is not cheap. Ceres opened on Mott Street in 2025, run by two Eleven Madison Park alumni who started from what they call the ideal New York pie and worked backward. The pies are 20 inches, cost up to $68, and there are no slices, ever. On a busy night you book a pie for a time slot.
Ceres
€€€€ · 1,252 reviews
The Spicy Vodka pie has a crisp, light, airy crust and rich sauce. However, pies are very expensive and whole-pie only.
Across the river, Dan Richer at Razza in Jersey City starts his sourdough on an organic flour high in bran and germ instead of 00, and specifies the size of each piece of wood that goes into the oven.
Razza
€€€€ · 3,656 reviews
The pizza is a standout, with a great goat cheese beet salad. Service was fast, but some find it not to their preferred style.
Salt on the oven floor: Tokyo-style arrives
One technique crossed over from Tokyo, by way of Naples. Before the pie goes in, the pizzaiolo scatters salt directly on the oven floor, so the bottom crust bakes against it and comes out seasoned from below. Tokyo pizzerias like Savoy and Seirinkan built the style; American cooks brought it home.
In Nashville, Sean Brock opened Sho Pizza Bar after a meal at Savoy. The dough ferments for 72 hours, the oven is a Stefano Ferrara, and it burns local hickory and oak. The name comes from shokunin, the Japanese word for a craftsperson devoted to one trade.
Sho Pizza Bar
€€€€ · 857 reviews
Standout pizza, great ambiance, and delicious bruschetta & Caesar salad. Crust is a bit dry.
In Los Angeles, William Joo and Jennifer So run Pizzeria Sei on Pico Boulevard, now with a second location in Palms.
Pizzeria Sei
€€€€ · 904 reviews
Traditional Neapolitan pies like pepperoni, diavola, and margherita are praised. Crust is light & fluffy, but all pies are charred, with no customization.
Tavern-style: the Chicago pie that got a reservation list
For decades, Chicago's thin, cracker-crisp tavern pie was the bar food locals ate and visitors ignored in favor of deep dish. Pizz'Amici opened in West Town in November 2024 in a former barbershop with about 40 seats, and its dinner tables now book out weeks ahead, with some space held for walk-ins. The crust is a long-fermented sourdough, the cheese is a mozzarella and provolone blend, and the pie is cut into squares the way taverns always did it.
Pizz’Amici
€€€€ · 369 reviews
Focaccia is great, pepperoni pizza has a crisp crust, and Caesar salad is fresh. Toppings can be a bit pricy.
Detroit squares go national
Detroit-style, the rectangular pan pie with cheese caramelized to the edges, spread across the country in the last decade. Palazzo Di Pizza in Royal Oak opened in 2019 as a family project. Shawn Randazzo, a cousin of the owners and a world champion at the style, helped build the recipes before he died in 2020. For the Detroit original, Michigan & Trumbull sits inside the city limits. See our Detroit page for the full lineage.
Palazzo Di Pizza
€€€€ · 678 reviews
Delicious, flavorful pizza with a fluffy yet crispy crust, and great gelato. Some found it bland and overpriced.
Indian pizza, now a second generation
Indian pizza is an American invention. Its usual origin story starts at Zante in San Francisco in the 1980s, where a Punjabi-born pizza maker began swapping tomato sauce for curry. Pijja Palace opened in Silver Lake, Los Angeles in 2022 as an Indian sports bar, and its chicken tikka masala pizza puts the sauce on a thin crust that does the job naan usually does.
Pijja Palace
€€€€ · 932 reviews
Indian-Italian fusion pizzas are delicious, onion rings are a standout. Some dishes like pizza and pasta were just OK.
In Minneapolis, Ann Kim has been mixing Korean flavors with Midwestern pizza at Pizzeria Lola since 2010, out of a French-built oven in the middle of the dining room.
Pizzeria Lola
€€€€ · 6,139 reviews
Great Korean BBQ and Hot Honey Jalapeño Tavern Pie pizzas, great ingredients. A bit expensive for the size.
The style still being invented, in Portland
The newest style on this list may not have a name yet. Sarah Minnick opened Lovely's Fifty Fifty in Portland, Oregon in 2010 as half pizza, half ice cream. Her pizzas, by the numbers:
- Five flours in the sourdough, many of them milled locally.
- Five cheeses, with fresh vegetables layered into the cheese so they cook together.
- Almost no tomato sauce. Only one pizza on the menu is sauced, yet she dries about 3,000 pounds of tomatoes every summer.
- Foraged toppings: nettles and oyster mushrooms, some picked by Minnick herself in Portland's Forest Park.
She came to pizza without a fixed idea of what it should be. The result is a pie tied to one city's mills, farms and forests, which is how every regional style started. Whether it becomes a "Portland style" will take decades to know.
Lovely's Fifty Fifty
€€€€ · 1,781 reviews
Praise for light, crispy crust, golden potato pizza, and homemade ice cream. Some wish for more protein options.
Two camps, one map
The traditionalists and the innovators do not cancel each other out. A 72-hour Tokyo-style crust in Nashville and a sauce-free nettle pie in Portland are both arguments about what pizza should be. Our map covers 5176 pizzerias in 354 cities, chosen by people who came for the pizza, so you can taste both arguments yourself. Start with New York, or follow a style from NY-Style to Neapolitan.
