I’m still curious WTF kind of pizza Jennifer Aniston is making that drives all her fellow celebrities wild.

Chicken Alfredo pizza.

When we were on holiday in Malaysia as kids, we ordered room service one evening. My brother was a picky eater so we asked for a plain cheese pizza, expecting like a margherita style.

Instead it was pizza base with just some sad grated cheese melted on top. Didn’t taste great but just thinking about it makes me laugh. We waited about 40 minutes for that disappointment.

Mellow mushroom, god I miss it.

There’s a place just a 5 minute walk from me that does $10 any size up to 5 toppings every Monday… So my weekly extra large 5 topping pizza is the only pizza I eat now. I have no memory of other pizzas. (It is actually pretty good though!)

Some place in Rone when I was about 10 on a trip with my parents. Cut out of a massive rectangle, ate in the street, it was memorable.

This

Burt’s in Morton Grove Il is still my favorite.

Burt passed a few years ago, but some locals bought it and reopened. It’s as good as ever.

Imo’s in St. Louis is my favorite overall. Thin, crispy crust, square cut, Provel as the base cheese. It scratches an itch that all other pizzas don’t. I’d eat it 7 days a week if I could, hot or cold.

I’ve had pizzas with superior ingredients, made in fancy ovens, served with wine instead of cold beer, but if I could get any pizza right now, it’d be Imo’s black olive or veggie pizza.

Lou’s

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.

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.

Lorenzo and Sons in Philly

It’s right across from the Theater of the Living Arts 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.

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