In the suburbs of Chicago where they both grew up, it was just pizza, according to Brittany and Brennan Grosvenor, the couple behind Proof in Portland, Oregon. Ordering came down to the question of “thin-crust, deep-dish, or double-dough,” Brittany recalls of her family’s Friday night tradition. The Grosvernors sell the former at Proof, though the language of “thin crust” has given way to the more nationally familiar phrasing of “tavern-style,” the pizza trend that has swept from coast to coast in recent years.
Outsiders might associate Chicago with its famous, tourist-beckoning deep-dish pizza, but Brittany says that’s just not reflective of reality, citing deep dish as a much less frequent treat than the Midwestern, thin-crust style that’s gaining popularity. “The pizza you get every week, or if you go to a kid’s birthday party, it’s always tavern-style,” she says.
“Tavern-style” pizza — which is prevalent across the Midwest, with Chicago, Milwaukee, Minnesota, and St. Louis touting similar pies — is known for its thin, cracker-like crust, cut into a lattice instead of triangular slices. Depending on the region and the pizza shop where one’s nostalgia lies, the sauce might lean sweet or spicy. Lightness and crispness, though, is the style’s unique sell. Writing for Esquire in 2023, Omar Mamoon called the variant, which was then still on the rise, “a foil” to famously thick Detroit-style pizza, which had its big moment in the late 2010s.
The beauty of the tavern-style pie is its shareability. A pizza yields more slices when cut into a grid than into triangles, explains Bradley Shorten, who’s behind both Kim’s Uncle Pizza in his hometown Chicago suburb of Westmont, Illinois, and the recently opened La Merna in Washington, D.C. Pizza cut into little squares makes for great drinking food, especially since it fits on a cocktail napkin. What makes a good pie, according to Shorten, is that every square has a little of every ingredient; the toppings go to the edge. And while the four, small corner slices might not be the “best” ones, Shorten says, they’re the ones “everybody goes for,” especially if they’re from Chicago.
Over the past few years, as “taverns” have become growing fixations for a cadre of restaurateurs, the “party cut” pizza and tavern-style pizza spots have also become ubiquitous, with openings like Keepers in New York city; One Trick Pony in Forth Worth, Texas; Tillie’s Tavern Pizza in Wheat Ridge, Colorado; and Zarella and Dimmi Dimmi Corner Italian in Chicago, where the style has always been abundant. For some Chicagoans, these openings across the country are an opportunity to correct the record about their city’s pizza culture, and for other Midwesterners to claim their stake in the region’s pizza, too.
When Mike Fadem opened the second location of his popular NYC pizzeria Ops — known for its wood-fired Neapolitan-esque pies with leopard-spotted crusts and pliant dough — he wanted to offer something new. Fadem is from St. Louis, where the city’s namesake pizza is super-thin. Despite his love for it, “it’s maybe not the best version of tavern pizza,” Fadem admits, noting the iteration’s many critics, some of whom take issue with its use of the gooey processed cheese called provel. The trajectory of tavern-style pizza has been like a game of telephone, he explains: St. Louis pizza is derived from thin-crust Chicago pizza, which itself came from Neapolitan pizza. Divergence has accompanied each jump.
One of Fadem’s employees at Ops, meanwhile, is from New Jersey, which claims its own thin-crust, tavern- or bar-style pizza tradition. (The bar pies of the Boston area also have their own devoted following.) Accordingly, “I had this interest in ‘can we make an Ops version of this?’” Fadem says. With Ops known for sourdough, Fadem also wanted to highlight the rich flavor of whole grains. And he wanted it to be really crispy, a quality he says draws in New Yorkers. Fadem’s take is on the menu as the regionally agnostic “tavernetta.” Though St. Louis and New Jersey served as initial inspiration, the best pizza from his research was actually in Milwaukee. The Tavernetta hasn’t displaced the other pies at the restaurant; it’s ordered in addition to them, with most groups getting at least one.
In June, Los Angeles cocktail spot Bar Next Door celebrated its third anniversary by adding food to its menu. Previously, the bar had allowed customers to bring in pies from Prince Street Pizza next door since Prince Street co-owner Lawrence Longo is a partner in it. “But, you know, after having a slice, sometimes you get a little full and you’re like, I want to go to bed,” says owner and bar director Brynn Smith. “That’s the whole goal for us: for people to stay a little longer, drink more. We thought the tavern-style pizza would be perfect.” The fact that the pizzas — they’re technically listed on the menu as “bar pies,” to better go with the establishment’s name — are exclusive to the bar just adds another reason to go out, Smith says.
The idea of the tavern as a social and convivial space is inseparable from the tavern-style pizza. Shorten’s goal with La Merna — which he runs with his wife Meg Schmitt, who grew up in St. Louis — was the feel of a Chicago dive bar or a Wisconsin supper club: a place with wood-paneled walls and checkered floors, where people could slide into a red leather booth for pitchers of beer and pizza and hang out for a while. As my colleague Francky Knapp wrote last year, the rising appeal of the “tavern” vibe across restaurants nationwide is rooted in the sense of providing somewhere homey and lived-in. At taverns, diners are beckoned to sprawl out and stay awhile; to free themselves of pretense and to tap into something welcoming in its familiarity. This, for so many people, is exemplified by the archetype of hometown pizza shop, which is forever tethered in our cultural imaginations to the trappings of a previous, simpler era.
It’s for this reason that, in Oregon, the Grosvenors have started serving their take on Bosco sticks, the stuffed breadsticks of Midwestern cafeterias, and Italian beef with giardiniera. While they could find certain Midwestern hits around Portland, it sometimes frustrated them that they couldn’t find everything in one place. According to Brennan Grosvenor, “We’re just trying to embody the feeling: If you went into a tavern in Chicago, what could you order there?”