New York Vs Chicago-Style Pizza: Which One Really Reigns Supreme?

Regional food preferences comprise deeply personal, fiercely protected terrain. So asking whether New York-style or Chicago-style pizza is "better" isn't an easy summit to climb. Like any geographically-based polemic, fans are quick to defend their home-team player — and it probably doesn't help that New York City is regarded as the trendsetting world stage, food and otherwise. Jon Stewart famously summed up the intercity pizza debate on The Daily Show: "Deep-dish pizza is not only not better than New York pizza, it's not pizza. It's a f*****g casserole." In the Chicago episode of "No Reservations," New Yorker Anthony Bourdain similarly quipped that deep-dish pizza is "a concoction I've always strongly believed to be lasagna in a crust [more] than anything that could bear the proud name of pizza."

To get to the bottom of the beef once and for all, Tasting Table conducted an exclusive poll. In our recent roundup of the 14 Best Spots For New York-Style Pizza (Outside Of New York), we asked our readers whether New York or Chicago-style pizza is best, and the results are in. With a whopping 83.24% of the vote, it's a landslide victory for New York pizza fans. Chicago-style deep-dish lovers were sorely outnumbered, pulling just 10.98% of the vote. The remaining 5.78% of voters said that neither type of pizza was especially better than the other (which is such a hot take that it borders inexplicableness, but live and let live, we guess).

As always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Hold on to your personal beliefs (they're all we have left!). New York-style pizza is large, thin crust, and often sold by the slice. Those slices are thin, wide, foldable, triangular, and crispy. By stark, opposite contrast, Chicago-style deep-dish pizza is thick, dense, and chewy. Rather than the standard crust-sauce-cheese-toppings assembly, Chicago deep-dish pizza puts the sauce on top – which isn't exactly helping beat the "casserole" allegations. If you're riding the NYC pie train (aka the MTA) alongside 83.24% of our readership, we've got 13 expert tips for nailing a New York-style slice to help you out.

At the end of the day, maybe it's unfair to judge these pizza styles against each other. Folks (not just gourmands) have long compared New York and Chicago, even earning the Midwest metropolis its unfair nickname as "the Second City." But after appeasing New Yorkers' egoic assurance that NYC is "the best city in the world" (a demographic to which your reporter ignominiously belongs), residents of both cities would likely agree that Chicago-style and New York-style pizza are ultimately different things. A somewhat-reluctant silver lining: In the aforementioned "No Reservations" episode, even the iconically sardonic Tony Bourdain changed his opinion of the Chicago-style pie: "I gotta admit, I like this stuff. A lot. I think my problem was just calling it 'pizza.' Whatever this is, I like it."