DC has great pizza that you can get at specific restaurants - Two Amy's is great, and I also like Pizza Paradiso. What I never found there, though, was a good slice I could get just walking off the street. That's where New York wins.

I love Sal and Carmine's! They were my local Pizza joint growing up and I think I was spoiled.

On the other hand, that Pizza looks good.

On the other-other hand DC is also the place where my Aunt tried to get me to eat these "really great bagels" except they were all fruit flavored.

Strawberry Bagel? UCK!

Bread and roses is exactly right: DC utility pizza is for crap. I also like Pizza Paradiso.

As long as they cut it in slices...

Don't forget Red Rocks.

Mmm...Red Rocks.

No doubt my taste has deteriorated since I left New Haven, but I like slices from Vace.

"There's no doubt that New York has some great pizza (I was particularly impressed by Sal and Carmine's)"

Well, no wonder you don't fully understand NYC pie if that's the best you've tried.

I'd recommend Varasano's List as a guide if you're a naif wandering around the big city asking who's buried in Grant's tomb.

Luzzo's is a reliably perfect pie, if you're curious about what you're missing.

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"But it's time DC got a bit more respect for its burgeoning gourmet pizza movement."

See. That's precisely why DC shouldn't be getting more respect for pie. The good pizza ovens don't have any pretension to producing gourmet food.

Go to the better pizzerias in NYC or New Haven for the first time, Ezra, and you'll see that they're producing really yummy peasant food.

If you do want good "gourmet pizza", try Batali's Otto Enoteca. It's fun and worth a visit, but it's nowhere near as rapturous an experience as the better "straight pizza" joints in NYC or New Haven.

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At the end of the day, there are few things sadder in the world than defensive District food boosterism.

I like Matchbox, but don't forget that Connecticut crushes all.

Here's a photo of a Luzzo's pie, if you folks out in the provinces are curious about what a real pizza looks like...

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My one worry about the good coal over pies: while the coal dust you can taste on the bread is pretty damn yummy, considering that one inhales rather than eats a good pie, I worry about eventually developing black lung disease.

That is not a mouth-watering photo. It is a barf-inducing photo. It looks like -- oh, never mind.

I haven't been to DC, but from the way you describe it and the picture, it sounds like this is not some new DC invention, nor is it best described as "what would happen if you mixed New York Pizza with California cuisine." It's just classic Italian pizza, which is to say, the way pizza is made in Italy (as distinct from Italian-American culture). (Well, round pizza at least -- lots of cafes in Italy also sell square, thicker pizzas that sort of resemble what we often call "Sicilian style" here.)

My favorite pizza ever is a french fry, tuna and onion number I had in a mountain town on the French border (about two miles into Italy) last summer. Delicious. It's apparently a big favorite among the Swiss mountain bikers who frequent the area.

"I haven't been to DC, but from the way you describe it and the picture ... It's just classic Italian pizza"

If you think that picture looks like classic Italian pizza, you really don't understand what classic Italian pizza is.

"If you think that picture looks like classic Italian pizza, you really don't understand what classic Italian pizza is."

Well, I agree that the crust is either too thick or too yeasty to be true Italian pizza, but in fairness, that looks a lot closer than most of the stuff I see in the US.

That pizza looks awesome. You do know it's very easy to make at home on the grill, and tons better then what you can get at 99% of pizza joints?

Ella's is the place to go. Check out the photo:
http://ellaspizza.com/

"Well, I agree that the crust is either too thick or too yeasty to be true Italian pizza"

And that's the thing, of course. Good pie is all about the bread. You can throw the tricolor ingredients on top of Wonder Bread, and you won't get true pizza.

If you walked into my house with the pie Ezra pictured, I'd thank you very politely, decline, and then go into my kitchen and make pa amb tomaquet with the crusty day old but tasty baguette sitting on the counter. And I'd have something better to eat than that "pie".

Pizza is about baking technique at the core, not about the ingredients.

"Pizza is about baking technique at the core, not about the ingredients."

And I guess that is why I think that the pictured pizza is an inexact but close facsimile. It's obvious that pizza has been cooked quickly at a high temperature, which is the sin qua non of good Italian pizza. The dough looks to be fairly simply, with little if any oil/butter in the mixture. Now, as I saif before, the crust end is way too big to be a true Italian pizza (implying the dough is too thick, or that it has risen to a degree that it shouldn't have), but that is a quibble in my book.

(By way of bona fides, my wife is an Italian literature professor at a Tier I institution--and a devoted Italian pizzaist. She probably spends six weeks a year in Italy. I'm usually with her for three of them.)

"It's obvious that pizza has been cooked quickly at a high temperature"

Actually, my guess would be that the oven wasn't hot enough.

Making doughy "pizza" is the standard clueless response to having an oven that can't reach the requisite temperatures for real pie.

It's amazing what a coal oven can do. Lombardi's in NYC has been running a totally paint by the numbers operation for years now. They don't really care about excellence or their ingredients, but they've got an excellent coal oven, so their pizza is perfectly adequate in spite of their indifference.

"She probably spends six weeks a year in Italy. I'm usually with her for three of them."

Lucky you. Going to Naples is near the top of my to do list specifically to try the pie.

Closer to home, it's worth making a trip up to New Haven for a weekend when clams are in season just to eat pie.

I'll heartily, and mouthwateringly, second the need to include RedRocks in this conversation.

"Lucky you. Going to Naples is near the top of my to do list specifically to try the pie."

There are good pizzas throughout Italy. When you're in Naples, you're a fool to stray from the seafood.

The best pizza is to be found in Charlottesville, Virginia.

So long as the media continues to be dominated by New Yorkers and Washingtonians with an inferiority-complex-based-crush on New York, real Chicago pizza is likely to hold a huge lead in the "short-changed in popular esteem" department.

I suppose it's possible that Barack Obama could change that. I hope so, since I'd love to find some real pizza on the east coast. Just another reason I for one welcome our new, Chicago-based, overlord.

What is that thing in the picture?
And Ezra and all you New Yorkers are wrong, wrong, wrong. The only city in America with good pizza is Chicago, and no, I'm not talking about deep dish. Go to Vito and Nicks at 84th and Pulaski, get a thin crust with nothing but sausage and you will never again be able to stand the taste of those limp, doughy discs you call pizza.

Truby's in Whitefish, Montana.

I've been searching fruitlessly for years for anything like it in the DC area.

I can only hope Kos and Jerome ate there often while they were holed up in Whitefish writing their book. If they didn't, I pity them.

I love Vace pizza, but it's not in any way fusion. It's an Italian deli and the pizza is Italian.

APS

We've had good pizza in DC for ten years at least. Where have you been?

Hey Ezra!

There's amazing authentic pizza in D.C. and it's been around forever. It's called Ledo's and their pizza is about as D.C. as you can get. For one thing, it's square.

http://www.ledopizza.com

Palisades Pizza on MacArthur Boulevard has great thin-crust and Sicilian-style pizza, by the slice or a whole pie.

I just want a good (i.e. right) fried shrimp po-boy.

Arlington's best kept secret: Liberty Tavern

Best pizza around, Italia style.

The bestest+Ledo's in College Park Maryland. This from western Colorado.

Ezra, you trippin'. Stay outta them hoity toity pizza joints.

Like Rainman and Japhy says ^ the ORIGINAL Ledo's in Adelphi, MD (right next to College Park). Original recipe they never gave to the franchises (don't know how they worked that out).

This is where you get your local cred my friend!!!

D.C. folks, if you want some really good pizza just get yourselves over to Z Pizza in downtown Silver Spring.

We in the D.C. region still can't find a decent bagel, but our Ethiopian food leaves New York in the (cockroach filth) dust!

Even at its best, DC pizza is just okay and certainly overpriced, in comparison with its NY counterpart. I'm neutral in the sense that I'm from Cleveland, which has a style different from either city and also superior to anything I've had in DC and far less pretentious.

OTOH, DC is better for Thai (try Wheaton not the overrrated places in NoVA) and Burmese than New York.

Buffalo, NY has Manhattan-quality pizzas at 1/3 the price.

As for NY versus DC: yes, New York has better pizza overall, but when I hear NY boosters like Eric Alterman constantly brag about how great their city is, it brings to mind Thurston Howell III bragging about how great it is to be rich. Fortunate are the fortunate, and they'll never let you forget it.