St Louis Pizza, top 5.
Like most cities, St Louis has pizza restaurants galore.and like most places, it‘s hard ot get good pizza. Though it pains me to do so, I have to include large chains in St Louis’s top 5. But it seems that in St Louis, almost every pizza place becomes a chain.
St Louis, Missouri Pizza
Joannie’s
2101 Menard St louis mo 63104 St Louis. ( City proper!!)
21hhtthttp://www.joan
The first time I had Joannie’s pizza was at a music show at Off Broadway, a great club with good sound on Lemp. Near The Anheiser Busch Brewery. I’m not quite sure if it’s’ because the music was always great and the beers always cold, but Joanie’s pizza was fun to eat. You can get just about any kind of toppings you might want, including squash, or crawfish.. Joanie’s pizzeria itself also offers live music occasionally, and also delivers to all sorts of bars and places where people eat pizza!
http://www.racanellis.comRacanelli’s
6655 Delmar-
St louis, Mo 63130 actually in
University City, but
University City is in
St Louis. Like Brooklyn is in NYC
The Racanelli Family is from the Bronx.In the 90s their pizza was great. The crust was good, the oil was just right etc..Rapid expansion ,meaning opening other stores, has taken it’s tol on the quality of the pie.l. It still is pretty good, but it’s great by St Louis standards. The original location, in the U City Loop, looked like a real pizza place. Small, but authentic. I haven’t been there since the remodeling took place, but would imagine it retains that Bronx flavor.
Pizza Wold is a chain. I first had it when living out in St Peter’s, Mo.. I used to get a reasonably thick crust, with sausage, or with mushrooms and
black olives.. It actually is good, the best chain pizza I’ve ever had.
http://www.pizzaworldusa.net/locations.php?L=Missouri
I believe Pantera’s is a St Louis phenomenon. I ate tons of this in the early and mid 80s.Also good chain pizza. A belly bomber, can be used as a anchor or stanchion. Very tasty, but don’t expect to get a lot of work done later if you eat more than one slice for lunch.
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I was born in 1958, and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. Great pizza was a birthright. Every which way I turned, there was great pizza. Even the bad pizza was good!.. I don’t remember ever having bad pizza in NYC till I was in my thirties. The eighties were a rough decade for music and pizza.
I grew up in the Madison neighborhood.. Kings Highway was a short walk away. Within just 4 short blocks of Kings Highway, between Ocean Avenue and E16th street, there were three great pizza places. I’m talking perfect crust, great cheese and sauce, just the right amount of oil. Not too little, not too much. And there was always a fresh pie about to come out of the oven. None of this new fangled idea of making a bunch of pies and stacking them up and then heating the cold , congealed slices when a customer came in. Pizza never lasted long enough to congeal,. As it was sold, the pie makers would put fresh pies into the oven to bake. If there wasn’t a relatively fresh pie waiting, we’d wait for a fresh one to come out of the oven. The best neighborhhod pizza was next to the Carvel on the NW corner of E19th street. Then a block down and on the south side,, across E18th street from the Avalon Movie Theater, the pizza was pretty darn good. Go back across Kings Highway, walk one and half blocks towards E16th st, the pizza was pretty damn good too. In my teens, Phil’s opened up under the train station, between E16th street and E15th street.. It was a little more tomatoey, and the crust a little thicker and softer., but good. It was open really late, a few hours into the next morning, so it was a popular spot.
Ave U. had Trio Pizza. Ave J. had Di Fara’s. It’s still there on the corner of E 15th street. Same guy runs it. He’s really old now. Looks like he is wearing the same apron from 30 years ago. And the place is just as dirty and rundown as it was then. I’m not talking just a nondescript place. I’m talking downright dilapidated. But it has become a celebrated, often reviewed landmark. He gets4 bucks a slice. Sells the pie faster than he can make it. We’ll talk bout the pie another time.
All that said, the best pizza place I frequented, and I mean frequented, was Mario’s. On Dyre Avenue , in the far Northeast Bronx.
