St. Louis Style Pizza (a/k/a "Pizztata")

I have been meaning to write about St. Louis style pizza. Ha! I bet you didn't even know St. Louis had a pizza style!

St. Louis style pizza is made with thin crust, cut into squares instead of wedges, and it uses a weird cheesey-food-thing called Provel (yes, capitalized!) instead of mozzarella. Wikipedia says it is almost unknown outside of St. Louis and was invented here specifically for pizza, since someone thought we needed a pizza cheese that melts well without the wonderful stringiness of mozzarella that makes biting into a hot pizza so messy. Other sources say that Provel is kind of like the Velveeta of white cheese: a processed blend of provelone, Swiss and cheddar.

Probably the best-known St. Louis style pizza comes from a local chain called Imo's, but it might not be the best ambassador of St. Louis style pizza. In fact, Doug hates it! Their crust is so thin and crispy that it's more like eating a giant tostata than a pizza, so we have dubbed it the "pizztata." Imo's cooks it until the cheese is a scary brown color. The first time I saw an ad for them I thought maybe they just didn't have an A-level photographer taking a picture of their pizza and that it got burnt or something, but I later figured out that their pizzas actually look like that. How do they taste? They're ok but not very satisfying, even for someone like me who prefers thin crust. It didn't help that the one time I ate at one of their restaurants (the other time we had it delivered), it wasn't exactly a clean and inviting place, and the staff's mood floated somewhere between apathetic and surly. Granted that was only one restaurant, but it didn't impress me.

If you want to try a St. Louis style pizza, I recommend Fortel's. Not only was their pizza filling and good, but offer a wide range of toppings so you can get something interesting (like a Reuben or BBQ chicken). They had sauerkraut! Disgusting, you say? Not at all! Sauerkraut is something I have never liked, and fortunately my German mother didn't think it necessary to force us to eat it. But a long time ago Doug made me try a Canadian bacon and sauerkraut pizza (maybe that's a Kansas City thing, who knows) and I've been hooked ever since. Yum!