The United States of Pizza

It happened the way Hemingway described bankruptcy: gradually and then suddenly. I was a young Brooklyn-​based food writer cataloging differences between crusts at Saraghina and Motorino while nibbling a slice from Roberta’s—hopping nimbly onto my red steel Specialized for a second slice at Joe’s or Di Fara or Best Pizza. Then I was married, pregnant, living upstate, ignorant of the changing nature of American pizza. Such ignorance may seem trivial in your line of work. In mine, it’s fatal. Pizza is the defining food of our country, the key to the American gestalt. Unbeknownst to me, it was evolving, severing ties with tradition in some cases while fixing firmly to others, all at the hands of chefs whose names I didn’t recognize. Meanwhile, I was making baby food.

My son’s now eight. He’s (basically) asking for the car keys and heading out for the evening. And I’m determined to scour the country for the bleeding edge of pizza. To explain my mission to my husband, I used the words of another great American man of letters, Washington Irving: “I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain…. Everything’s changed, and I’m changed.” I took his stunned countenance as comprehension, and bought a plane ticket to Oregon.

Why Oregon? Because I’d received a piece of unassailable intelligence: Anthony Falco, formerly of Roberta’s—the Bushwick-based star of the aughts-era pizza scene—had declared Portland, Oregon, “America’s greatest pizza city.” He now works as a pizza consultant. I reached him in Naples, Italy, where he was on vacation, enjoying his favorite pastime: eating pizza. “Portland is a perfect storm for great pizza,” he affirmed. “They have an amazing Mediterranean climate, great ingredients. And a community that values real food.” Portland’s artisanal bakers apparently have something to do with it too, but it was hard to understand Falco through his chewing. I had called my pizza-connoisseur Portland friends, who’d promised me an inside line on the best plain cheese pie in the country—the true mirror of pizza’s soul.

So I flew to the fairer coast and dropped a bag at my friends’ house on a verdant, tree-lined street—its driveways full of bumper-sticker-festooned Westfalia camper vans—only to discover that Portland’s No Saint would be closed for the duration of my brief stay. It took pleading and haranguing and tossing around phrases like pizza quest and pretty please, but eventually the owners agreed to open just for me. I donned a high-tech waterproof shell and hiking boots—as one must to blend in in Portland—and walked the half mile to the restaurant.

PIES HAVE IT

Pizzas from No Saint in Portland, Oregon. Photo: No Saint / Thomas Teal

No Saint’s fresh-faced owners, Gabriella Casabianca and Anthony Siccardi, are native New Yorkers (and high school sweethearts) and hospitality-industry veterans who opened No Saint in late 2022 on “a maxed-out credit card,” Casabianca says. The decor is simple—bouquets of fresh flowers, Siccardi’s cookbooks, a selection of lesser-known wines strategically deployed—and sunlight filters into the dining room through plate glass windows, even amid gloomy Portland rain.

Sitting at a long wood communal table, I inquire about their theory of pizza. Siccardi answers in detail: “We use nice grains—they’re all unbleached, which is better for our digestion, better for our guts.” This includes: “Red Rose Artisan high-gluten bread flour and Cairnspring Mills Expresso, which has a lot of protein”—to give the dough elasticity. On a tour of the open kitchen, Siccardi points out a cook making mozzarella from fresh curd. The prosciutto cotto and sausage are also made in-house. Asked what inspires No Saint’s pizza, Casabianca replies: “Where we are. The growing season here is incredible, the small farms are just amazing. We’re this mixture between a West Coast and East Coast pizzeria. Like, you could come here and get a classic cheese pizza, or you could come here and get a seasonal one with quince and pepperoni.”

The words cheese pizza provide an opening, and in an instant we three are sitting before a blistered sample, dappled with cherry red, its mozzarella exhibiting cartoonish stretch as I take hold of a slice. It looks—and smells—like the platonic ideal of pizza: like pizza drawn in children’s books. I take a bite. Wild Sicilian oregano, liberally sprinkled on just before serving, is floral and almost medicinal (in a good way). It’s as though each flavor has been amplified, even the dough tasting nuttier and sweeter than I’d expected.

I’m tempted to try others—one topped with local pear and sausage, perhaps, and another with individual sprouts of kale called kalettes. But I only have two hours before my next pizza, at Lovely’s Fifty Fifty, famous for its farmers-market-specific pies, and I’ve been told to arrive early.