Pizza may be one of America's favorite foods, a food that has become more American than Italian, with slices in cities from east to west offering a different take on how to best combine three basic ingredients: dough, cheese and sauce. There's New York-style, Chicago and Sicilian. Some bake up a thin crust, while others are thick and gooey. And what was once basic shredded mozzarella has now moved to include dollops of cream-like goat cheese, or finely shredded blends of imported and aged specialties.
Today, when it comes to pizza, anything goes -- and personal taste means every place has its fans and its haters. In South Florida, we all have our favorites.
But there's still good pizza and bad pizza, no matter how you slice it. To help navigate the South Florida selections, we've taken the liberty of selecting the area's best pizza joints, from the old-school mom and pop spots that to the rustic coal-fired ovens that produce some stellar gourmet slices.
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10. Grimaldi's Coal Brick-Oven Pizzeria
Although it's somewhat of a chain with locations in states like Nevada, Arizona, New Jersey and New York, Grimaldi's pizza is a top favorite for those that live above the West Palm Beach line. According to Grimaldi's, everything from the coal used to cook the pies, to the water that makes the dough, is specially imported. The coal-fired, brick-oven-baked pizza has a unique flavor with a crisp, crunchy crust (here considered a New York-style slice) thanks to what Grimaldi's claims is 100 years worth of pizza-making tradition. How? First, they use a special Pennsylvania coal called anthracite, delivered to each location monthly, which burns cleaner and more eco-friendly than gas or wood. The fires are stoked daily at 4 p.m., a way to keep things consistent, and thanks to the fuel source the ovens are known to get intensely hot, baking the pizza quickly and evenly. As if that's not enough, the restaurant also claims to have hired a chemist to find the exact formula of the Brooklyn location's water so they could recreate the exact mineral content for a replicated taste profile.
This Lake Park pizzeria has been serving up slices since opening its doors 45 years ago. Even though they don't deliver, this hasn't stopped people from coming back -- year after year -- for a taste of one of the best pies around. Anyone born and raised in the North Palm Beach area has most certainly had a slice or two of this "Chicago" style pizza, one that has a thin and crunchy crust, and is delivered to your table steaming hot with tons of cheese, light on the sauce. Three generations of Camilli's have worked the small restaurant, but it's owner Ken Camilli -- born in Minnesota -- who founded the place. His recipe for the dough is Chicago-born, passed down from his uncle who visited the city in the '50s and shared the secret weapon for making some of the best pizza around.
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