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Plus, the ten best pizza states in America.
I spent a good deal of 2007 hanging around Detroit, back before the world became fully aware of what exactly had happened to the city. That was the year I first went to the original location of Buddy's Pizza, historically known as Buddy's Rendezvous, at the corner of Conant and McNichols. Then and now, it's an address fairly far off the beaten path, way up in the northeast part of town.
There are so many to choose from, but Buddy's is inarguably Detroit's most iconic pizzeria; since the early days, it has expanded to become a regional chain, but this bunker-like pile, distinguished from nearly everything else around it by showing signs of life, remains its spiritual home.
Buddy's goes back, way back, to Prohibition times, when Gus Guerra, an immigrant from the tiny Republic of San Marino, ran the place as a blind pig, or speakeasy. Eventually he enlisted his wife, Anna, who borrowed her Sicilian mother's recipes, and began to make pizza, cooking them in the sturdy metal trays used to store parts at the automobile plants. By the late 1940s, Detroit was on to Guerra's curious square pies, with their crispy edges and generous amounts of sauce ladled on top, cut into hearty, satisfying squares.
For the better part of a century, Buddy's has been here, right here on this same corner in Detroit, watching as the city's fortunes rose and fell, and then kept falling. The surrounding neighborhood has been in decline for much of its modern existence, but there has always been pizza, beyond the cinderblock walls and glass bricks that pass for windows, past the bocce courts and parking lot security guard and all.
Continued below.
The Best Pizza in Every State
I spent a good deal of 2007 hanging around Detroit, back before the world became fully aware of what exactly had happened to the city. That was the year I first went to the original location of Buddy's Pizza, historically known as Buddy's Rendezvous, at the corner of Conant and McNichols. Then and now, it's an address fairly far off the beaten path, way up in the northeast part of town.
There are so many to choose from, but Buddy's is inarguably Detroit's most iconic pizzeria; since the early days, it has expanded to become a regional chain, but this bunker-like pile, distinguished from nearly everything else around it by showing signs of life, remains its spiritual home.
Buddy's goes back, way back, to Prohibition times, when Gus Guerra, an immigrant from the tiny Republic of San Marino, ran the place as a blind pig, or speakeasy. Eventually he enlisted his wife, Anna, who borrowed her Sicilian mother's recipes, and began to make pizza, cooking them in the sturdy metal trays used to store parts at the automobile plants. By the late 1940s, Detroit was on to Guerra's curious square pies, with their crispy edges and generous amounts of sauce ladled on top, cut into hearty, satisfying squares.
For the better part of a century, Buddy's has been here, right here on this same corner in Detroit, watching as the city's fortunes rose and fell, and then kept falling. The surrounding neighborhood has been in decline for much of its modern existence, but there has always been pizza, beyond the cinderblock walls and glass bricks that pass for windows, past the bocce courts and parking lot security guard and all.
Continued below.
The Best Pizza in Every State
