I’ve seen some road time in my days.

I’ve seen roughly all 50 States, in some part or another, except Rhode Island and Alaska. I think. Most of my cross country travels took place either in the cramped backseat of a friends white Ford Probe on the way to random concerts, or on a 3 month skateboarding tour that I went on back in 1996. Now, I am lactose intolerant and eating pizza is the not the greatest of ideas, but sometimes, I mean, sometimes, you gotta have a slice.

You know what I’m talking about.

You got your classic New York thin crust; you got your Chicago style deep-dish; you got your somewhere-in-betweeners, and your North Beach style (cheese on bottom, toppings on top) which is popular in Northern California, but in all of the land, there is one style that stands alone

This, my friends, is a Saint Louis style pizza.

It’s similar to a New York style, but not as, how can I put this? Limp… Bottom line, when it comes to pizza, as in sex, when you step to the plate, you don’t want to be swinging a garden hose.

The problem with the NY style (with all due respect) is the sauce/oil to crust ratio. It’s all wrong. You end up with a soggy pie and grease running down the front of your t-shirt, which inevitably leads to the dreaded “topping avalanche” and an oil stain on your new white t-shirt.

Not that I know from experience. While on a date……

The last time I ordered pizza out, we got a NY style and by the time the delivery kid found the address, our pizza had disintegrated into a soupy mass that I literally had to eat with a spoon.

A SPOON! PIZZA!

I took this was one of the signs that I had to get out of California.

But I digress.

There are other short comings to non-Saint Louis style pizzas and this is that none of them (unless you ask) are made with Provolone.

The Saint Louis style pizza has its roots in the Webster/Kirkwood neighborhoods. My understanding is that a couple of guys started making a cracker-like crust for their pizzas in an old filling station off of Summit Street where the old Streetside Records building. They planned to make their pie crusts cracker thin and use “sweet lady P” to hold down the toppings. The idea spread and viola, we have the Saint Louis style pizza pie.

Hopefully this style will find its way out to the West Coast. I tried a name brand knock-off of the style, from a place that rhymes with “Ominoe’s”; it was a pretty good try, but still not the real thing.

So next time you are in Saint Louis, give it a shot; you won’t be sorry and if you are you don’t know crap about pizza.