Tavern-style pizza

Tavern-style pizza from Caradaro Club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Tavern-style pizza, also known as party-cut pizza,[1][A] is a type of pizza that has both a thin crust firm enough to have a noticeable crunch and slices cut into squares, as opposed to wedges.[3][4][5]

Characteristics

Although regional styles can vary, tavern-style pizzas across the Midwestern United States typically have a crispy and thin crust.[3] In Milwaukee, this is referred to as a "cracker" crust;[6] crusts on Minnesota-style pizza tend to be a bit softer.[7] Unlike hand-tossed pizzas common on the east coast of the United States or in Italy, the dough is rolled out before baking.[8]

Prior to cooking, the crust is topped with a seasoned tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings like sausage. Immediately prior to service, the pizzas are cut into squares instead of the classic triangle.[3]

History

Purpose

The name "tavern-style" comes from how the pizzas were originally served in taverns. According to at least one origin story, the pizza tempted customers into lingering at the establishment, at which point they would be more likely to order more alcohol. Other bars might serve peanuts or other salty snacks for the same purpose.[9][8]

According to one narrative, the pizza's signature square slices were created so that a customer could hold that in one hand and a beer in the other.[9] Another theory is that they made it possible for taverns without plates to instead set the pizza on napkins.[8][10]

Creation

Claims to originating the style have come from residents of Milwaukee[11][12][13] and of Chicago.[3][14][15]

Milwaukee

Milwaukee's claim dates to a restaurant named Caradaro Club, which opened in 1945. It was the first establishment in the city to serve pizza.[16] The classic story is that Caradaro's co-owner Joe Todaro and his wife Agatha married Neapolitan pizza's thin crust with Sicilian pizza's rectangle slices.[11][12] They were influenced by Anthony Paterno, who sold Italian foods in Milwaukee and Chicago and baked pizza in the latter. He allowed Joe to look at his operations but would not give them a dough recipe.[16] As a result, Todaro's wife innovated Caradaro's especially thin and crispy crust,[16] which by 2026 measured about 1.5 millimetres (0.059 in) thick.[17] Caradaro then popularized their pizza by handing out free individual square slices to people walking by the restaurant.[17]

Of those pizzas, Todaro's son later recalled:

My father used cake flour because it was finer. It had yeast, and he put baker's malt into it for the flavor and he used lard and olive oil. The consistency of the crust was a little bit more than crackers but it was flaky and it had a nice flavor. We didn’t make round pizza, they were oblong and you’d cut them into squares. ... And sauce (was) crushed tomatoes with, if they put anything in it, salt. You put a little oregano on and mozzarella cheese goes over that. And then on top of the mozzarella cheese, you put toppings, and in those days all we had was pepperoni and sausage, olives, mushrooms and onions. The guy ... that was making the sausage for us, he used pork butts (and) my father was very particular about how much fat was in them.[16]

Chicago

Restaurants in Chicago may have begun serving something like tavern-style pizza beginning in the 1930s.[18] At the least, people were consuming thin- or thinner-crust pizzas from places like Granato's Pizzeria Napolitana.[19][20] However, Chicago reporter Monica Eng found that a contemporary Chicago Tribune article described Granato's pizza as having an English muffin-like crust, which she believed would be a much "spongier texture" than the later tavern style.[20]

Today, a number of individual Chicago restaurants have claims to originating the style between 1946 and 1950.[20] Eng hypothesized that the first tavern-style pizza in Chicago was baked in 1946 by the-then Vito's Tavern, later renamed to Vito and Nick's Pizzeria. Rose George, the owner of the restaurant as of 2023, has stated that her father got the idea during his military service in Italy during World War II. He wrote home to his mother and asked if she could create a thin crust for what would become the restaurant's pizza.[20]

Another contender for the first tavern-style pizza in Chicago is the Home Run Inn in South Lawndale, which opened in 1947.[19][20][21] Eng identified at least four additional restaurants that could have originated the style: Italian Fiesta in Hyde Park, Father and Son in Logan Square, Marie's Pizza and Liquor in Albany Park, and Candlelite in Rogers Park.[20]

Elsewhere

Many other tavern-style pizza establishments also opened in the US Midwest in the 1940s. Notable examples include:

  • Wells Brothers in Racine, Wisconsin, which started using a thin crust pizza with cornmeal on the bottom in that decade[22]
  • Riverside Pizza in Iron River, Michigan, established in 1946 and known for making pizzas with a "sweet and tangy" sauce; they have been voted as the best pizzas in the state's Upper Peninsula[23]

Regional varieties

A tavern-style pizza made in California
A close-up of one slice

Chicago hosts the iconic variety of the tavern-style pizza,[24] but several regional varieties exist, all of which retain the thin crust:

Lesser-cited varieties include Dayton, Ohio, which uses unsweetened tomato sauce.[27]

Sales

Tavern-style pizza is commonly found in restaurants across much of the Midwestern United States.[19] Its popularity widened across the United States in the 2020s.[14] The expansion included tavern-style releases from the US restaurant chains Pizza Hut[29] and Domino's,[30] in addition to the Tombstone frozen pizza brand.[31]

A number of sources have said that tavern-style pizza outsells deep-dish pizza in Chicago.[32] According to 2013 Grubhub data and the company Chicago Pizza Tours, thin-crust pizza outsells the more widely known deep-dish style among locals, with GrubHub stating that deep-dish comprises only 9% of its pizza deliveries.[33][34] In response, Technomics food industry researcher Darren Tristano questioned GrubHub's conclusion on the basis of the delivery service's user demographics, saying that its younger users cannot afford deep-dish pizza, while NPR noted that the data would not include information on two particular chains specializing in the style (though with just 20 restaurants in the city of 2.7 million) that are not on GrubHub.[33] In 2020 COVID-affected data, Yelp also found that thin-crust pizza was more popular in Chicago.[8] However, Food & Wine magazine spoke to multiple Chicago pizzerias in 2024 whose sales of the two styles of pizza were evenly split.[9]

Notes

  1. ↑ Various other names exist, especially combinations of some or all the words "Chicago," "tavern," "style," and "thin crust."[2]

References

  1. ↑ Diamond, Jason (July 22, 2019). "Chicago's Real Signature Pizza Is Crispy, Crunchy, and Nothing Like Deep Dish". Bon Appétit. Retrieved July 16, 2023.
  2. ↑ Hynum, Rick (April 29, 2026). "John Arena: An Expert's Guide to 9 Classic Regional Pizza Styles". PMQ Pizza. Retrieved August 7, 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 López-Alt, J. Kenji (March 17, 2023). "Kenji López-Alt Spent 5 Months Studying Chicago Thin-Crust Pizza. Here's What He Learned". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 6, 2024. Retrieved August 21, 2024.
  4. ↑ Vettel, Phil; Kevin Pang (July 23, 2009). "Pizza slices: Two foodies debate the merits of wedge versus 'party cut'". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on July 26, 2009. Retrieved July 23, 2009.
  5. ↑ Chahwala, Jaison (March 13, 2017). "20 Great Spots to Taste Real Chicago Pizza: Tavern-Style Thin Crust". Eater Chicago. Archived from the original on March 14, 2017. Retrieved March 13, 2017.
  6. ↑ Flanigan, Kathy (October 5, 2007). "No matter how you slice it, it's pizza". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Archived from the original on October 20, 2016.
  7. 1 2 Summers, Joy (July 28, 2023). "Why do Minnesotans cut their pizzas in squares?". Minnesota Star Tribune. Retrieved January 5, 2024.
  8. 1 2 3 4 McClelland, Edward (June 30, 2020). "Tavern Style Isn't Just Chicago's Signature Pizza, but Its Signature Food". Chicago Magazine. Archived from the original on February 27, 2021. Retrieved August 22, 2022.
  9. 1 2 3 Allen, Tony (October 22, 2024). "3 Must-Try Pizza Styles in Chicago — and the 1 Top Topping". Food & Wine. Retrieved June 6, 2025.
  10. ↑ McClelland, Edward. "Why Is Thin-Crust Pizza Known in Chicago as "Tavern Style"?". Chicago Magazine. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  11. 1 2 Powers, Joy; Hurbanis, Jack (April 27, 2021). "A Look Into The History Of Milwaukee Style Pizza". WUWM 89.7 FM - Milwaukee's NPR. Archived from the original on May 19, 2024. Retrieved August 21, 2024.
  12. 1 2 Christenson, Ann (April 6, 2021). "What Is Milwaukee-Style Pizza? And Who Made it First?". Milwaukee Magazine. Retrieved August 21, 2024.
  13. ↑ Fredrich, Lori (October 14, 2022). "What you knead to know: Milwaukee-style pizza". OnMilwaukee. Archived from the original on October 17, 2023. Retrieved August 21, 2024.
  14. 1 2 Odell, Kat (July 28, 2023). "The Pizza That's Taking Over the US". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on July 28, 2023. Retrieved August 21, 2024.
  15. ↑ Mamoon, Omar (March 24, 2023). "Chicago Tavern-Style Pizza is Sweeping America". Esquire. Archived from the original on June 28, 2024. Retrieved August 21, 2024.
  16. 1 2 3 4 Tanzilo, Bobby (October 31, 2017). "Caradaro Club: Milwaukee's first pizza". OnMilwaukee. Retrieved August 7, 2026.
  17. 1 2 Bernhard, Rachel (August 7, 2026). "Milwaukee's first pizza lives on 80 years later, one square at a time". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved August 7, 2026.
  18. ↑ Elliot, Elizabeth (November 1, 2018). "Deeper than Deep-Dish: The Case for Chicago as America's Pizza Capital". Perspectives on History. 56 (8): 27–29.
  19. 1 2 3 Fehribach, Paul (2023). "Tavern-Style Pizza". Midwestern food: a chef's guide to the surprising history of a great American cuisine, with more than 100 tasty recipes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 240–241. ISBN 978-0-226-81949-5.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Eng, Monica (2023). Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites. David Hammond (1st ed.). Champaign: Three Fields Press. p. 133. ISBN 978-0-252-05406-8.
  21. ↑ Dolinsky, Steve (April 21, 2022). "The Food Guy: Home Run Inn Pizza – a Chicago Tradition for 75 Years and Counting". NBC Chicago. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  22. ↑ Kierzek, Kristine (September 28, 2010). "Wells Brothers Restaurant". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Archived from the original on December 15, 2025.
  23. ↑ Sankey, Rachel (August 23, 2023). "Pizza with a side of U.P. nostalgia". The Business News. Retrieved December 15, 2025.
  24. ↑ Lee, Dennis (July 10, 2024). "What Sets Tavern-Style Pizza Apart From The Other Chicago Pies". The Takeout. Retrieved August 7, 2026.
  25. ↑ Portman, Jed (August 12, 2025). "St. Louis-Style Pizza". Serious Eats. Retrieved December 16, 2025.
  26. ↑ Pang, Kevin (December 14, 2017). "What the Uff Is Minnesota-Style Pizza?". The Takeout. Retrieved December 16, 2025.
  27. 1 2 3 Tanen, Noah. "All The Midwest Thin-Crust Pizza Styles, Ranked". Food52. Archived from the original on August 19, 2025. Retrieved August 7, 2026.
  28. 1 2 Bernhard, Rachel (August 7, 2026). "Yes, Milwaukee-style pizza is real. And it's fabulous". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved August 7, 2026.
  29. ↑ Selvam, Ashok (June 28, 2024). "Pizza Hut's Tavern Pizza Is More Embarrassing Than Chicago Baseball". Eater Chicago. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  30. ↑ Kessler, John (July 10, 2024). "In Praise of... Domino's?". Chicago Magazine. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  31. ↑ Sosland, Zachary (April 9, 2024). "Nestle pizza brand launches tavern-style pizza". Food Business News. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  32. ↑ Diamond, Jason (July 22, 2019). "Chicago's Real Signature Pizza Is Crispy, Crunchy, and Nothing Like Deep Dish". Bon Appétit. Retrieved December 16, 2025.
  33. 1 2 John, Derek (December 20, 2013). "Deep Dish or Thin Crust? Even Chicagoans Can't Agree". The Salt. NPR. Archived from the original on May 28, 2015. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  34. ↑ Rousseau, Caryn (September 19, 2014). "It's not all deep-dish pizza in Chicago". The Detroit News. Associated Press. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved January 17, 2017.

Further reading

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