Pi - zza Choice

Setting:  Small Town or Big City

Era:  The 1980s (naturally)

It is a tale of the pie.  The savory, mouth watering, and delectable artwork that sends a family into a frenzy.  The scent allures one and all.  The vision of a crusted handle with the remainder of this food, entrancing the onlooker.

Yes, we are talking about that scrumptious meal in itself, the pizza.  Within the large metropolis', locally owned pizzerias were as endless as any eatery, coffee house, fast food chain, and so on.  Each city and region seemed to have their own style or type of pizza: the deep dish of Chicago, the large and thin crust of New York, the rectangular not a pie shape of Detroit, the similar shaped but cracker style crust of the St. Louis, then the gourmet style toppings of the California are just a few of the multiple styles of pizza out there.

Even how you chose to consume that slice was nearly as unique; from a simple clasp at the crust handle, to folding the slice lengthwise, proper utensil usage, to even rolling the slice were some of the ways we ate our American pizza.

In small town USA, the chain restaurants seemed more predominant than the single owned "mom and pop" restaurants.  Dominos, Fox's Pizza Den, and Pizza Hut were the big three chains located in my immediate Clearfield and Curwensville area of Pennsylvania.

(Photo Courtesy: Google Street View)

Single owned places like Mabel's Pizza, Brother's Pizza, and the Snack Shack were the few locally owned places.  Mabel's and Brother's were Clearfield based, another non-franchised Brother's Pizza was in DuBois, and then the Curwensville pizza place, the Snack Shack, were the prime, non-chain pizzerias.

The chain pizzeria's did have the perceived corner of the market as they offered delivery while the locally owned did not or had a very small radius.

(Photo Courtesy: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dominos_pizza_logo.svg)

Arguably, Dominos and Pizza Hut were only located in Clearfield and DuBois with only a Pizza Hut in Philipsburg (to my knowledge) and their respective radius' were not much greater being that there were many rural homes outside our boroughs.

(Photo Courtesy: https://www.foxspizza.com/)

The other pizza chain, Fox's Pizza Den, was hit or miss with delivery services.  Fox's had locations in Clearfield, Curwensville, DuBois, and Philipsburg and each seemed to have their own variation to the pizza recipe.  The Fox's in Clearfield did not have much flavor, from what I recall, however the Curwensville franchise was the favorite if your family chose to drive the 8-10 mile journey.

Pizza was an exciting meal as a child.  For my family, it was usually restricted to a monthly special on a Friday evening, Sunday after church treat, or perhaps a birthday party celebration rather than a weekly "what do you feel like" option.  While I steered closer to the standard pepperoni pizza, I did enjoy the occasional "supreme" with greens peppers, mushrooms, black olives, and crumpled sausages.

(Photo Courtesy: https://media.zenfs.com/en/aol_travel_host_736/3ea7f0bde2628f6a3c4631c62cd8c6a6)

While not attempting to chose a favorite or deliver free advertising, there is only one pizzeria that stood out as a finer dining experience and that was Pizza Hut.  The branded light fixture hanging above every booth and through the rest of the dining room coupled with their salad buffet station made me feel like I needed to dress up for this cuisine.  Yet, it was just another restaurant for me because we had a couple arcade games in the waiting area along with a jukebox to crank out the latest tunes to any patron.

The other pizza restaurants such as Fox's had standard tables and chairs, Domino's only offered delivery, Mabel's was a quaint, few tables restaurant with the red and white patterned table clothes along with the Clearfield Brother's Pizza.

Having an opportunity to travel to Pordenone and Aviano, Italy in 1999, the pizza is far and away superb to any American pizza.  While I stayed in a hotel, I frequented a small ristorante called Ristorante Al Boccondivino.  The picture below was taken in 2017 and it appears it was heavily remodeled since I was there.

(Photo Courtesy: Google Street Views)

The pizzas were not cut so that was an experience to need cutlery to eat the medium sized pie.  Another experience, which I knew when ordering, was that they did not offer pepperoni.  In fact, if you ask for pepperoni, your pizza will have slices of very large peperoncini peppers equivalent to the ones pictured below.

(Photo Courtesy: https://wildwood.express/products/wcs-pepper-pepperoncini?srsltid=AfmBOorTNkyfJp1JRi67iInlaXjjZpoMEIxJYNyhA3ExEQpMdsOEpNIS)

Instead, the closest equivalent is hard salami.  The Italian pizzas have a definitive tomato flavor, with a mild yet distinct cheese flavor, fresh powdered garlic, all combined with the hard salami makes one crave this delicious pizza.

Now that I have made you salivate and perhaps even persuaded you to go order a pizza, what were your pizza choices where you grew up?  Were you in the big cities; walking from pizzeria to another?  Were you like me, small town USA with a few independents and a few chains?  Are you out of the US and have had a unique pizza?