Asklemmy

The first time I had Papa John's with the garlic sauce. I guess I just like garlic.

A random delivery from a place I can't remember the name of in Vancouver. The cheese was fresh and thick, the veggies were fragrant, the sauce was sweetly herbal with a hint of red wine, the pepperoni was perfectly crispy and the dough was soft and firm in all the right ways with that just-baked-bread earthy musk.

When I tried to order again they'd just shut down. That pizza was too pure for this world.

It was in a pizzeria called Da Michele in Naples. It does only Margherita and Napoletana. It is on another level.

Julia Roberts, in the movie, Eat, prey, love ate there.

Off the Bryn Mawr stop on the far North Side of Chicago, there was a little storefront called "Barry's Pizza Spot". They sold stuffed pizza^*^ by the slice, and they almost always had one that sausage, mushroom, and onion. I sublet an apartment off this stop for a month one summer and ate this slice for dinner over a dozen times. The first time, it was the best pizza of my life. Two other times surpassed the record before I moved away. It closed a couple years later. My mouth is watering just thinking about it now.

^*^If you don't know what stuffed pizza is, it's the best of the three Chicago pizza styles. It's stopped pretending to be anything other than a pie, and the cheese and "toppings" are all underneath a second, upper crust that's prevented from burning by a top layer of sauce. One slice is a meal.

Pesto base, grilled chicken, cashews, red onions, sun-dried tomatoes.

The best pizza I've ever had is probably the Little Caesars by my old apartment. Money can't buy the experience of getting a couple cheap zas on your way home from work, sitting down in your living room with your brother, and playing Overwatch "split screen" (two TVs next to each other) until 4 o'clock on Friday (as in 4:00 AM on Saturday)

Lorenzo and Sons in Philly

It’s right across from the TLA and we used to stop there all the time before and after a show. They were massive slices for cheap and really hit the spot every time.

I dunno if it was the best, but the pizza that lives in my memory was a whopping 24" pizza from a local place. That's over 450 square inches of 'za, or 11 square meters for the Europeans.

It was glorious, and took four incredibly high stoners about a day and a half to work through.

Nothing in my area after 2020. They all got greedy, switched to Sysco to save a buck, and now they all taste the same.

There's no pizza I've enjoyed more than a Fantasia from Il Mondo in the Lombok neighborhood in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Okay this is totally not what you’re asking but I have to share a funny story. (To answer your actual question, can’t think of anything but I don’t live in NY or Chicago so…)

My family visited Scotland when my daughter was about 6, and there was one night we got to a hotel and just needed some food, and not a lot of places near us were open. But there was a pizza place, which would satisfy the kids. My daughter chose the “American” pizza, which had chicken, barbecue sauce, and yellow corn on it. (Yes, I’m serious.) She has been asking for that pizza for years since then. WTF?

Does it not depend on hunger for you? I'll honestly find the frozen pizza from Aldi to be amazing when I'm super hungry.

Apart from that I had really great pizza at an Italian grocery store in Dijon. They're all the same after a certain point. It was also great somewhere in Amalfi

It was in a cellar in Genoa many many years ago. Fond memories

Elephant & Co. in Detroit. But I grew up on Detroit style, so I may be biased.

Patsy’s in east Harlem not the others all around manhattan

Riip Pizza in Huntington Beach, California hands down

I'm a fan of flatbreads, where you pick your own toppings sandwich shop style.

Tortinos

Margherita at a random restaurant in Naples, duh