Being that I’m originally from the Chicagoland area but have been living in St. Louis for almost five years now, I feel that I have a unique perspective on a very important culinary issue: pizza. More specifically, which kind of pizza is better – Chicago or St. Louis style.
I’m not going to beat around the bush. I grew up enjoying deep dish slices from legendary masters such as Giordano’s, Lou Malnati’s, and Gino’s East. To me, these gargantuan, cheesy slabs are just what pizza is. Yes, I have a bias, and yes, I do like Chicago style better. But before the hate mail starts rolling in, I’d like to say that although the competition is pretty stiff, I’ll admit that St. Louis somehow manages to give Chicago a run for its money…
My first taste of St. Louis style pizza was the self-proclaimed original, “square beyond compare” – Imo’s. I have to preface this by saying that before I moved to St. Louis I had no idea that the city had its own style of pizza. I had also never heard of toasted ravioli, if that gives you an idea of the Chicago food bubble I had emerged from.
What I saw when we opened the Imo’s box immediately aroused my suspicion. There was no melty mozzarella, and while I was fully expecting it to be thin crust (I wasn’t in Chicago anymore, after all), this stuff was thin. I wanted pizza, not a pizza-flavored cracker. But I put my skepticism aside and took a bite. The taste was different, but actually not all that bad. What bothered me was the slimy texture. This was also my first introduction to provel cheese, which is basically what makes Imo’s pizza what it is. My initial negative reaction didn’t stop me from eating more (it was reminiscent of the pizza I knew, which was good enough for me), and now I’ve actually kind of developed a taste for Imo’s. It’s not usually my first choice, but we get it every now and then at my husband’s request. And sometimes it tastes pretty darn good.
While Imo’s is pretty much the epitome of St. Louis style pizza (provel cheese, thin crust), there are several other varieties of pizza made in this city that I think are far superior and almost as good as Chicago deep dish. A relative newcomer to the St. Louis pizza scene is Pi, which has locations in University City and Kirkwood, and one coming soon to the Central West End. Pi’s signature pizza is deep dish and very similar to Chicago style, which might explain why I like it so much. In fact, fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama liked Pi so much when he tried it on a St. Louis campaign stop he invited the owners to Washington to make pizzas for a White House dinner earlier this year. Pi is delicious for sure, but as a native Chicagoan, I was a little floored that Obama chose St. Louis pizza over the Chicago classics. The word sacrilege comes to mind, but I guess that’s just a testament to how good this pizza really is.
While Pi is my favorite St. Louis pizza, Black Thorn Pub in Tower Grove comes in a close second. I’m not sure what “style” you would call it, but its thick crust pies are huge, cheesy slices of heaven. Speaking of heaven, you’ll be one step closer to getting there with every artery-clogging bite of Black Thorn deliciousness – but trust me, it’s totally worth it.
Even though there is a special place in my heart for Imo’s, Pi, Black Thorn and other St. Louis pizza places (Pointer’s on Big Bend in Richmond Heights gets an honorable mention), none of them holds a candle to good ol’ Chicago deep dish pizza in this loyal Chi-town native’s mind. You are, of course entitled to disagree with me. And since I’m assuming it’s mostly St. Louisans reading this post, I can say this: Chicago has better pizza, but St. Louis has a better baseball team. Let’s call it even.
Carlie is the Food and Drink Editor for Girls Guide. By day she is an educational textbook editor, and she moonlights as a foodie and barfly. You can email her at carlie [at] girlsguidetothegalaxy [dot] com, and you can follow her on Twitter – @carbirwin.
If you ever get a chance, try Ponticello’s up on Bellefontaine road in north county. Now, that’s St. Louis style pizza. Faraci’s on Manchester in Ballwin is pretty close to it as well.
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I personally am not a HUGE fan of Imo’s, but everyone has their opinion, right?
Pi and BlackThorn are both delicious…
Two places to check out in Soulard are Joanie’s pizza and Feraro’s Jersey Style Pizza.
Feraro’s might be my favorite because my father is from NYC, and it reminds me of the East Coast. Check it out!
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La Pizza in U City is great New York style pizza. Chicago style only gives your diarrhea.
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I’m a St. Louis native, so I’m an Imo’s fan, but I also like the thick stuff. Talayna’s has pretty yummy deep dish with Italian sausage. MMMM.
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Great article! I do agree with you about baseball vs pizza (shhh, don’t tell Mike). As another Chicago native I can back you up on this…however, I never acquired a taste for Imo’s and don’t ever want to! The only St. Louis style I can stomach is Cecil Whittaker’s, and even that is kind of pushing it.
Black Thorn is deep dish, but not Chicago style…but I do love it! We’ll have to try Pi next time we’re in town. Also, I do think Talayna’s is about the closest I’ve ever had to true, good Chicago-style in the StL. Are they still open?
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As far as I know, Talayna’s is still open, but I’ve never been there – I’ll definitely have to try them sometime, along with the other recommendations!
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We moved to St Louis from Champaign IL a few decades ago and my idea of delicious pizza is Papa Del’s from Champaign. His restaurant served (serves) a Chicago style deep dish. He was a Chicago native and his staff used to drive up to Chicago on a regular basis for authentic ingredients. I still remember the first Imo’s pizza we ordered as new St Lousi residents. I was gravely dissappointed. To me it tasted like velveeta on a cracker. I just wasn’t prepared for Provel! I’ve tasted some decent pizza in St Louis, but nothing memorable. St Louis does, however, have a lot of other fabulous food to offer!
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black thorn pizza’s crust is very very bland, so if you like that kind of thing then i guess its good pizza.
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Like Sara, I’m from the Champaign-area and I can attest to the incredible pizza at Papa Del’s. Another favorite up there is Monical’s Pizza. For a thin crust, it’s pretty darn good.
Also like her, I can’t do IMO’s. A previous employer always used to get it for lunch meetings and I would skip lunch those days rather than eat it. I just can’t get past the consistency of the Provel.
Another STL pizza that’s worth trying – Fortel’s Pizza Den. They have a few locations in the area, so surely one is near you.
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in all of the times that i have gone home to visit ben’s parents, we have never had pizza. maybe we will have to change that! now, “toasted raviolah” – as renee pronounces it — that’s a different story…a st. louis tradition that this chicagoan loves!
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I can’t say that I’m a fan of Imo’s, even after living here for 10 years and being married to a woman who thinks it’s the best pizza in the world. I think it’s ‘vomit on a cracker.’
I am a very big fan of Dewey’s Pizza in U City and La Pizza in U City. I’ve been to Pi a couple of times, but I guess I prefer NY style crusts to deep dish.
Nice article.
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So, why does Imo’s cost just as much as the most expensive pizza, when theirs is so thin and has so little real cheese % in the Provel, in fact, so little topping at all, that they save probably 80% on the ingredients. That’s what I want to know. That gimmicky square cut doesn’t do well in the fridge. Unlike thicker square-cut pizza with more stuff on it, the smaller edge pieces turn quickly into flavored triangle crackers. …pure waste.
At a certain point you have to say what’s a pizza and what’s not. You could argue whether, in sandwiches, a wrap, a pita pocket, a burrito that is Mexican in shape only, 2 pancakes with something between them, etc., are actually sandwiches. Yes, technically–but (especially for the last 2) not really. No.
In that same way, Imo’s is kind of tasty if you’re not comparing it too closely with actual pizza.
It’s good in a class by itself, sort of in the same way that Kraft Dinner is “cheesy” and Velveeta and other “processed cheese foods” are authentic to themselves, and (to some people) yummy in their own right–but in no way do they resemble the real thing. They don’t need to; in fact it’s when you compare that they look nasty. Do pizza-flavored potato chips taste like pizza? Yes and no. I really love Kraft dinner as a total comforting junk childhood-memory indulgence, but when I think of cooking some macaroni and cheese, it never crosses my mind. Different category!
Imo’s IS a cracker with topping–what else IS an ultra-thin, baked or toasted, dry, crunchy, brittle, grain-flour-based non-risen bread product, but the very definition of “cracker”? The topping is very thin, so it could be argued it is just a flavoring, a condiment to the cracker…The too-salty, gooey Italian-style “Velveeta” is tasty, too, if you think of it as just that: Provel, though it contains real cheese, is very pricey “processed multi-cheese food”, rather than actual cheese. Thought of that way, it becomes nicely smokey-tasting, non-stretchy, non-chewy ” cheese food”—although in a quantity I’d consider, again, only a condiment.
So, the ingredients are (honestly) pretty good, if you’re not expecting : bread, cheese, any quantity of sauce, or vegetables other than condiments. (They do pile on the olives sometimes–a variable bonus.) There’s enough meat for the meat-eaters, but not the meat-lovers, and the vegetables are mere shreds, thinly scattered and cooked to the shriveled what-is-that-meant-to-be? stage. It wouldn’t matter if they were fresh or not–there are too few and they’re too tiny to taste the difference. What they do add that is often lacking in St. Louis pizza is seasoning in the (too-scanty) sauce–it really helps.
Talayna’s would be great, but the pizza is all but lacking sauce, it’s so thinly applied, and watery. The fresh yeasty bread is a nice thickness, and the ingredients are tasty, fresh, and accompanied by real cheese. I’ve thought of taking in some decent sauce or even tomato paste and asking them to use it instead. The St. Louis Pizza company on South Hampton in the city would be tasty if its sauce had a trace of seasoning. And so on….sighhhh.
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