When a New Yorker insults Chicago’s pizza, you know it’s going to open a can of worms.
That’s what happened this morning when Chicago Reader scribe Michael Gebert used his column space to chastise J Kenji Alt-Lopez after the Serious Eats culinary director threw some shade on the Windy City’s pride and joy.
Alt-Lopez first fired shots by calling out Chicago’s deep-dish as something akin to “lasagna,” and then reared back for some more: “…without fail, each one has at least one major, glaring flaw: unseasoned dough.”
Gebert replied that the real problem is how the argument is framed:
In addition to claiming that New York is really just a town full of “excellent Neapolitan pizzas,” Gebert went on to argue that Di Fara’s Sicilian sheet pizza, “by far the better of the two [pies],” is thicker, and therefore reminiscent of a Chicago-style pizza.
Alt-Lopez didn’t take too kindly to the comparison, nor did he think it abided by the rules of logic:
Sound the alarms.
While the Gebert-Alt-Lopez battle is just beginning to heat up, the Chicago vs. New York pizza rivalry is as old as Dom DeMarco himself.