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Detroit-style pizza
Detroit-style pizza
Nobody had ever offered to “watch” my car before. Of the multitudinous midnight meals, of the crosstown calorie chases and slurry of after-hour haunts and from-the-gut choices in dubious neighborhoods and out-of-the-way, in-the-know joints I dragged myself and peers—because I saw some local bring Bourdain one time, one night—it took until now to realize a fully sanctioned armed parking lot security guard. On a bright midsummer day, no less. Somehow surrounded by Detroit proper, in a city within a city, an autonomous town whose name delightfully forgoes a vowel—Hamtramck. On East McNichols and Conant, the sky dotted with lazing marshmallow cloud tufts, the industrial-skewing neighborhood feels more hard to place than necessarily dangerous, with more buildings seeming abandoned than occupied, more burnt out than abandoned, and more traffic cones and metal fencing than seems rational given the dearth of traffic or construction or people. It was here I first wondered if it is better to have someone watch your car, or worse to be somewhere it is a good idea to have someone watch your car.
Of the moment Detroit-style pizza has and is having, over the past half-decade or so, the it spots of listicles dedicated to the brick-like pies, the Emmy Squared of New York, the Emmy Squareds of one dozen-plus other eastern seaboard locations, the Paulie Gee’s of Chicago, the half-dozen other Paulie Gee’s, Via 313 in Austin, Tony’s in San Francisco, the veritable continent of Instagram optics, hell, the Pizza Hut rendition, it all adding up to a stew of near-universal joy—nobody I’ve talked to has strayed from this duality: “I love Detroit style” or “what is Detroit style?”—Buddy’s Rendezvous is where it all began. Here, over checked tablecloths and a worn wood-hued veneer of yesteryear, all ice chest-cold bottles of Sam Adams and the waitress’ easy manner of assuredness, the feel is far from a scene Esquire dubbed in 2019 “one of the hottest food trends across America.” Buddy’s feels not hot, but rather cool, and not of a trend, but mostly outside of an understandable time or place.
Either way, the first pizza here was proofed and tossed and stretched, maybe like the origin story itself, in 1946. As it goes, Gus Guerra ran a bar, his Sicilian mother suggested adding food to make more dough, figuratively and literally, for a growing family. The dutiful son began experimenting with his mom’s recipe for sfincione, a focaccia-like topped bread she baked in pans from the hardware store—the same pans used as drip trays in the nearby auto factories, a detail so perfect it has to be true.
By ‘53 Gus had perfected the formula, and also sold the business to partners. He set out for East Detroit (now Eastpointe) to open the Cloverleaf Bar and Restaurant in the first filial extension that eventually left a complex Motown family tree of square pies: Loui’s, Shields, Detroit Style Pizza Co.
Try it at any of these or whichever big-city, trend-minded pizza spot might be closest to home, and you’ll be met by a specialty at once brute and beautiful: high-walled, pan-cooked, the cheese stretched all the way to the brim to achieve characteristic burnt-edge frico, a caramelized perimeter of charry crunch holding within a spongy soft airiness. The sauce typically goes on last, in dallops or stripes, colorfully crowning a beefy implement that practically begs for a Nashville filter and a hashtag. The minute requisite to let the pizza cool, to figure out the best method of attack for the brackish, deep dish-ish heft, is ideal for snapping a pic. Apparently, the original recipe called for pepperoni to be placed directly on the dough, to allow penetration right into the crust. But this sounds perverse. And by now everyone is mostly playing jazz with the base concept anyhow.
Adorable Hodgepodge
What matters at heart is you have an oblong rectangle, cut into squares, with a delightfully carbonized crust the color of an expensive leather jacket, or your uncle’s ‘90s Camaro, the soot-ish hue that is usually, in most other circumstances, indicative something has gone awry in the kitchen. This mixes with an almost tossed-together top of bright, sweet-leaning tomato sauce and semi-soft Wisconsin brick cheese. You might not be able to tell which was placed first or second or, maybe, both went on simultaneously, the package an adorable hodgepodge aesthetic like that of a toddler who dressed himself for the first time while thinking about whatever it is that toddlers think about.
The finished feel isn’t that of art or craft or of a specialty oven or European expertise or anything that should be the subject of such a think piece. Rather it is that of primordial satisfaction, the best bites embodying the base joy of textural contrast—crumbly scorched crust and a lush tooth-sink middle.
You’d likely need a fluency in 23-and-Me to connect Buddy’s with Jet’s, the almost 400-location, 19-state franchise that somehow feels like a Detroit forgotten child. What with the Italy flag color schematic, mustachioed jet-packed mascot, the price point, the gimmicky add-ons like “turbo crust,” it’s hard to take seriously as more than a ubiquitous novelty, another chain, a big Little Caesar’s, a son of Papa John.
Cruise past the Kenilworth location and there is simply a feel of more fish in the sea of Eastside munchie fare. A sparring partner for Topper’s. There is certainly no pizzaiola. There is less customer service. Truthfully there’s probably not that much love baked into the divot-ed focaccia-like crust. But this conveyance is of a delightful golden brown, autumnal hue, the toasted color of the favorite season of poets, reminding that death is inevitable and pressing, and you should probably eat something in the meantime.
A crust-sauce-cheese construction feels standard, that is until you get to those buttery, earthy end bites. Here it is all delightful crackle and goop combo, a lavish mouthfeel of blistered heel and half-melted brick, just enough tomato tang.
They could certainly go further with the cooking time, do better with the toppings’ quality, but Jet’s seems to know exactly the extent of their own appeal: so much they offer a trademarked eight corner pie, where every piece has two sides of caramelized edges. This feels like cheating though, like an overstuffed dream team, like Doc Brown’s premonition about going back in time and changing history. It is an alteration of the natural order of things. To eat the corner, you must get to the corner.
Better yet, there is this: a single slice can be had for $2.25. You won’t read about it in any visitor bureau guidebooks, but there is quite the singular Milwaukee lakefront experience of sitting in your car on, say, Wahl Avenue, looking past the horizon, bursting sauce pockets and crusty perimeter crumbling atop the lap as you gaze over the big pond and give a thankful nod to our neighbors across the way. This is a true celebration of Great Lakes living.
Bayview Classic
As Milwaukee Epicureans mature, they move south. And so it goes with Detroit-style, Bay View’s Classic Slice version feeling grown up, self-assured, and like the other side of the tracks. It is prohibitively expensive—a single $14 four-square will not fill up two serious eaters; it is available in limited quantities and only two variants—with or without pepperoni.
I’m also not entirely sure if it is a regular menu item or something they just make for me personally because I keep calling, keep asking as politely as possible, keep tipping big and not minding absurd wait times, always staying in my lane like dealing with the Soup Nazi. There is no mention of the square breed on the website. Nobody I talk to seems to know about it unless I tell them, gushingly, annoyingly, at which point I feel I’ve violated some rule of the Detroit-style fight club.
But unless it is all imagination, my favorite order makes their standard NYC slicing seem a bit rote, makes my beloved meatball sandwich seem almost light and breezy. Here is the kitchen finally getting the most possible run out of the oven. Just consider the formidable fence of cauterization, the scorch extending even to the undercarriage, in places across the top. The bountiful pepperonis, a smidge spicy, a tad thick, curl up from the incineration, and then curl up together, some laying atop, spooning really, other pepperonis, in a suggestive display of handcrafted imperfection and nitrate harmony. With mini grease pools inside and near-destroyed edges, these meat bite tokens feel like a microcosm of the pizza style’s enjoyment: shimmering glisten and dehydrated crunch together in one loving moment.
If you’ve ever accidentally burnt toast, and rather than toss it applied an unhealthy amount of butter to cover up the mess, the zone that exists right between atomized ruined crust and over-lubed middle is the spiritual feel of this pizza. There are whiffs of the seductive dangers of fire, a decadent melty finish, and lessons in the miracle of the Maillard Reaction—the official name of the chemical synthesis that gives browned foods that characteristic flavor, and the only interesting chemistry lesson in known history.
Since I’ve maybe eaten two dozen and feel the overfamiliarity of long-term relationship status where souls have been barred, morning breaths smelled, it might be said these pies could sometimes use more of the satisfyingly pasty tomato sauce. But they still always sit somewhere between complete masterpiece and the spot to take the Detroit training wheels off.
Great for Taking Away
Even further across the tracks sits Flour Girl & Flame, far enough I cannot get a pie back to my house in under 20 minutes. I’ve tried, even carelessly stomping through the lingering slicks of a recent ice deluge on a recent Wednesday night—the only day they offer their take on squares. But one of the underrated attributes of a Detroit pie, especially during our everlasting takeout times, is an inherent ability to motor. It transports well, reheats easily, and has its own special appeal when the sauce is a little chill. The lag time is frustrating no less because it feels somehow disrespectful to the hulking wood-burning oven, and, even more, to the obvious deep care of the pizza squad, evident at once from their warmly saturated social media pie posts, or from the stenciled logo on their homey new West Allis digs.
Immediately inside the door is a striking olfactory brew of wood smoke and cooking cheese and witchy secrets to life and to an impenetrable world way back, just glimpsed through a sliding door, where pizzaiolos appear to be having more fun than working, pirouetting with long peels, somehow timing it all just right. Meanwhile up front stands a huddle, making small talk and discussing how recently we might have had COVID, awkwardly studying the menu on the wall, as if we haven’t memorized it from Instagram when we placed the order two days before, trying not to let the smell intoxicate to the point of defending our pies too aggressively, preemptively boxing out with elbows like there’s a bad free throw shooter on the line. Or maybe that was just me.
The gravity of the boxes expresses seriousness of intent. Thick edges are the seared golden brown of a sunburst Stratocaster, one from the ‘70s that was taken on tour by a heavy smoker. The “You Gotta Burrata” beds crumbled sausage, crisped black pepper bacon, balsamic caramelized onions, mozz, cheddar, provolone, parm, and clean white beanbags of burrata that look like you might fashion a hunk into one of those airplane neck pillows.
On impulse I started to note that such onioning can often feel overwhelming. Yet each move here feels so assured and calculated that after a few bites I came to consider myself wrong, stupid, happy. It works, as food people like to say, about combinations and innovations and such that imply a meal should function resolutely, like a motor. It works, in a stinky, gluttonous, effervescent manner that is hard to categorize. It “works” like an occasionally successful freelancer “works.” The Detroit Pepperoni holds its own four cheese blend—brick, mozz, cheddar, and provolone. But here it’s the cup-and-char pepperonis—perfect little lifeboat shapes of grease and fat to float away from reality and doctor’s orders on—that dominate with muscular saltiness.
Both pies feature globby racing stripes, an aggressive Crayola red, placed almost like an afterthought, but thick and liberal enough to somehow work around and through most every bite. It all feels irresponsibly rich, butter greasy, your fingers quickly taking the texture of having just done something under the car’s hood, a reward and indulgence and invitation to go too far, one slice past hurt, “training to failure” as a gym person might say. And you perhaps should be a gym person after a trip here. Yet the body itself—a proudly-promoted heirloom flour with a sourdough-y profile finish—is actually air-pocketed, porous and squashy. It’s the kind of beautiful baked dough you’d think they might hand out in the corner cafes of Paris, if you’ve never been to Paris. The kind to tear with your hands as you walk down the street in a carby European idyll. Perhaps credit is due to the oven: a 900-degree wood-burning vortex from central Maine. It is the pastor, or online-ordained best friend, marrying these disparate elements into one endlessly biteable vessel.
It’s hard to believe a place so fresh, so innately cute—they cater weddings, grow their own greens and herbs hydroponically in the shop, collaborate with A&M organics in Riverwest to sell hot honey using, get this, honeybees they keep on the roof—might yield a product of such unrepentantly badass brawn. Bee’s! Jet’s does not keep bees on their roof. Buddy’s does not grow their own herbs.
In truth, my memory of Buddy’s has faded through the years. Still the impression lingers. I remember the crunch, the cheese pull, a “this is it?” sentiment followed, two bites later, by a “this is it” interior proclamation. I remember a thick air vibe of alright, where a five-hour drive to land at a rickety table while a rent-a-cop watched over a borrowed Altima felt certainly, somehow, like the right move.
I remember knowing I needed to try Buddy’s because all the articles told me I needed to try Buddy’s. Like I needed to go to Motown and eat a Coney Island Dog on the same trip. Like any curious traveler needs to eat barbecue in Texas or burritos in San Francisco. I think I probably was first hipped by Alan Richman’s glowing take. Or maybe it was Adam Richman. Either way there I went, paying respect to something original, noble. I wonder if the purveyors of Classic Slice, or Flour Girl, if anybody that has ever worked at any of our five area Jet’s, has ever offered proper homage to the Motor City. I wonder if it matters. Actually ,Detroit style may be akin to a Philly cheesesteak in that regional proximity shouldn’t have that much to do with the quality of product. An honest facsimile could be reproduced almost anywhere.
In fact, if that old adage that applies to sex extends to pizza—even when it’s bad, it’s good—it may be doubly true for Detroit. Through squares across the country I’ve pondered the why, only arriving recently on a par-baked notion that there is something reminiscent here of cafeteria pizza. Maybe you can remember a grade school afternoon when it was pizza day and you were glad your mom didn’t pack a lunch. Or you simply pretended your mom didn’t pack a lunch and got in line, joyous to then be sitting down with goofy friends and the finally feeling of getting a break, of getting to be yourself, of getting greasy with a gut bomb of carbs and sauce and stretching, drooping, dangling cheese, a special Friday night treat now extended to the context of peers and weekday togetherness. In this way the Detroit movement seems anathema to the Neapolitan craze that preceded it—there is nothing exotic or other or old-worldly. There is no rigor of a special oven. There is no presiding body of authentication condescending and hall-monitoring with validation. You don’t need certified tomatoes within a volcanic rock-toss distance of Mt. Vesuvius. Pick the pan and cheese of your liking and you could do a reasonable job at home. I don’t even think you need to knead. All these squares stand for something much simpler: a callback to first loving the cushiony comfort of pizza.
