True food fact: You can order a pepperoni pizza, and eventually end up with a cheese pizza, but it doesn't work the other way around. Your cheese pizza won't ever become a pepperoni pizza, or sausage, or onion.
But that's the life of the cheese pizza. Yep, we order them straight-up, but many a person decides against the toppings they chose and opts to pick off the extra stuff and go with just the cheese and the crust below.
So there's a question to consider on National Cheese Pizza Day on Thursday, Sept. 5: How many cheese pizzas are ordered every year and how many other types of pizza become cheese when they reach the table and get picked over by the diners? We bet the second category is much larger than the first.
In short, cheese pizza, we want to sing your praises. You are a Stand-Up Pie, the unsung stalwart of the savory crust-dairy-and-sauce world. Other pizzas flush with toppings are pretty flashy, but you have to bring the goodness courtesy of three basic ingredients, and sometimes two, if a diner chooses to skip the sauce.
Where should we honor this gooey-good circle on its deserved day of honor? You might try...
Stella Barra: Both the Hollywood and Santa Monica locations serve up some fine 'n frou-frou pizzas, but the Margherita is the mozzarella-nice classic. Yes, sweet basil is involved, so maybe this isn't strictly a cheese pizza, but, what? You're going to turn up your nose at sweet basil? Please. Basil is in most sauces, anyway, so consider that you're just getting some extra along for the tasty ride.
Masa of Echo Park: Do you ever wake up wanting Chicago Deep Dish but, as luck would have it, you aren't in possession of an airplane ticket to Chicago? This is a hearty answer; if you want the cheese pizza, look for the deep-dish entry called "Lots of Cheese." Plus, they import Scala's Authentic Hot Giardiniera straight from the Windy City. Did reading those four words just make your mouth actually water? They have that effect.
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Vito's: This West Hollywood shop doesn't mess around with descriptives when it comes to its cheese pie. The menu says the cheese pizza put Vito's on the map (oh, and it calls the prospective diner "Kid," which makes us love Vito's all the more). Straight-up dairy doughy deliciousness doesn't need to overly parsed or analyzed, right? Let's love it, eat it, and let it be.
