Discover the best pizza in United States

Pizza in the United States is not one thing but a set of regional schools, each with its own oven, dough, and rules. It starts in New York, where Lombardi's was licensed in 1905 and is widely counted as the country's first pizzeria. From there the American styles branched out and stopped resembling their Neapolitan parent.

The four that matter most all have their own hub: the wide, foldable New York slice baked in a gas deck oven; the coal-fired, charred New Haven apizza that Frank Pepe started in 1925; the rectangular Detroit-style pan pizza with a fried cheese edge, born at Buddy's in 1946 in repurposed blue-steel automotive parts trays; and Chicago deep-dish, high-walled and sauce-on-top, which traces to a Chicago room that opened in 1943. A modern Neapolitan revival runs on top of all of it.

New York leads our coverage by depth, followed by Chicago, Brooklyn, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Each runs a different default: Chicago its deep-dish and tavern-cut thin, Detroit its pans, Brooklyn its old coal ovens, and the West Coast a wood-fired Neapolitan lean.

The most popular pizzeria in the United States by review volume is Joe's Pizza. Did you know the Detroit pan style exists because of the car industry? The first pizzas were baked in the blue-steel utility trays Detroit factories used to hold small parts, which is why the corners crisp the way they do.

Prices read low by the slice and mid-range by the pie. A plain cheese slice usually lands between 3 and 5 dollars, while a wood-fired margherita runs 16 to 22 dollars. Slice shops are walk-in; the destination Neapolitan and deep-dish rooms often take bookings on weekends. Skip the Times Square tourist-strip counters. The spots ranked here are ranked by what people who came for the pizza actually thought, not by which slice shop had the longest line.