Food Travel Destinations: Everything You Need to Know About Pizza Lover Cities
For travelers who plan trips around what’s on the plate, food travel destinations devoted to pizza offer some of the most rewarding itineraries in the world. Five cities — two in Italy and three in the United States — have shaped how pizza is made, baked and eaten, and each one still serves the original recipes that put it on the map. Whether you’re chasing a wood-fired Margherita in Naples or a square-cut tavern slice in St. Louis, these are the stops that belong on any pizza pilgrimage.
Naples and Palermo: Where Italian pizza began
Italy gave the world pizza, and two cities anchor the story. Naples is the original birthplace of pizza as we know it, and its Neapolitan style is defined by a round, soft dough with a very thin center and a high, airy crust spotted with bits of char. Pies are baked in wood-fired ovens at temperatures often topping 800 degrees for just a minute or two. The craft of the Neapolitan “Pizzaiuoli,” or pizza-makers, has been recognized by UNESCO since 2017.
Naples is also home to one of pizza’s most famous origin stories. The pizza Margherita was invented at Pizzeria Brandi by Raffaele Esposito in 1889 to honor Margherita, the Queen of Italy. Pizzeria Brandi is still open today.
About 200 miles south, Palermo built its own tradition. Sicilian pizza was popularized there in the 1800s, known locally as “sfincione,” which translates to “thick sponge.” It has a rectangular, focaccia-like thick crust topped with tomato sauce and local cheeses like caciocavallo or tuma, often finished with anchovies or onions. The “Sicilian style” pizza Americans know usually keeps the rectangular thick crust but swaps in more familiar toppings like mozzarella.
New York and Chicago: How pizza became American
Italian immigrants brought pizza to the United States through New York in the late 1800s, and the city quickly became the second great hub for the dish. The first pizzeria in the country was opened by Gennaro Lombardi in downtown Manhattan in 1905. Fittingly named Lombardi’s, it’s still open today. Lombardi is also credited with creating the now-iconic “New York style” — a circular pie with a fairly thin crust that’s become shorthand for big-city slice culture.
Chicago took pizza in a completely different direction. In 1943, Ric Riccardo, Ike Sewell and his wife Florence introduced Chicago-style deep-dish pizza at Pizzeria Uno. As ChicagoHistory.org explains, “The Chicago style of pizza was marked by three characteristics: (1) enormous amounts of cheese and a thick, sweet pastry shell crust; (2) very high oven temperatures (600°F) while baking, with plentiful amounts of cornmeal sprinkled in the pan to help insulate the bread; and (3) very long cooking times (fifty to sixty minutes for a medium-sized pie).”
Because deep dish bakes in casserole-depth pans at high heat, the layering is inverted: cheese goes on the bottom, toppings come next and tomato sauce is added last to keep the cheese from burning. Pizzeria Uno is now a chain with 100 locations, but the original Chicago restaurant is still standing — and still serving the pie that started it all.
St. Louis: The cracker-crust city worth a detour
St. Louis is the wild card on any American pizza tour, and the differences start at the crust. The local style is known for an extremely thin, cracker-like, yeast-free crust topped with sweet tomato sauce and Provel cheese — a processed blend of cheddar, Swiss and provolone — with toppings spread to the very edge. It’s famously cut into small squares or rectangles, a style called party cut or tavern cut.
A man named Amedeo Fiore is credited with inventing the cracker-like crust and the square-cutting method in 1945. The signature gooey Provel cheese came later, introduced in the 1950s by Parente’s Pizza. Today, the most popular place to try it is Imo’s Pizza, which has helped popularize the St. Louis style since 1964.
Planning a pizza-focused trip
What makes these five cities such strong food travel destinations isn’t just the pizza itself — it’s that the founding restaurants are still operating. Travelers can eat at Pizzeria Brandi in Naples, Lombardi’s in New York, the original Pizzeria Uno in Chicago and Imo’s in St. Louis, tasting versions of pies that helped define each regional style. Pair those anchor stops with neighborhood pizzerias and you have the framework for a trip built entirely around one dish.
The cities also work well as standalone weekends or as legs of a longer itinerary. A two-city Italian swing from Naples to Palermo covers the full arc of Italian pizza tradition, while a U.S. route connecting New York, Chicago and St. Louis traces how the dish evolved across American regions in a single century.
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