The Pizza Show: Detroit

So what should I buy a hot dog? Yeah, one morning, whatever, let's do it, what's up, why not? Oh, very good, thank you very much, looks good, happy, this is my first cheesy dog, this is the one you're in the right place, that's what I heard. the best in the country I need a little break from

pizza

so I came here to see my boy he has the best dog in town this one is good one more to be good one more. Detroit may be known as the Motor City, but it is also a

pizza

city, yes we are Motown, but we are also the dough city, as the pizza here is unique, it is rectangular cooked in a blue steel pan and It has that iconic caramelized crust, it's easy to see why this pizza is so popular not just in Detroit, but all over the country, there are even Detroit style pizzerias on the same block for me, in Brooklyn, look at that cheese.

I'm trying the classics, some newer places, even one of the biggest chains built in town. I'm headed to Detroit. to see why the city is a good place to eat pizza. Hello, you are watching a pizza

show

on munchies. Welcome to Detroit, so we're out there, folks. One of the most iconic pizzerias is in Detroit and, really, in the country, it is the birthplace of Detroit. pizza style. I'm really excited to get in there and see what it's all about. Buddy's has been around since the 30's but it didn't always serve pizza, it was an after hours gambling and drinking place until Gus Croire introduced pizza. the menu in 1946 I'm meeting with Larry Simone, a former Buddy's employee and Detroit-style pizza enthusiast, how would you describe classic Detroit-style pizza?

Detroit style is that deep dish pizza on a seasonal blue steel pan in an oven that you set up a certain way made fresh every day is amazing thank you very much what we have here is the original friends pizza and then we made in honor of the people of Detroit a spicier pizza and we call it Detroit ER. I'll tell you. just look at this pizza look at that caramelized cheese in the corner my mouth this restaurant water is a pleasure can we eat, let's eat, pass that corner? I want to get my eyes on this mmm, get some of that crust. on the edge that's where that flavor is nice and crunchy, you know, the cheese on the edge is great, but really what catches my attention is how light the pizzas are, incredibly light and fluffy, the heavy rubber area It's like an angel food cake, a nice crunch on the bottom, then you have your pepperoni, your cheese and finish with the sauce your friends in 1936 this was a Blind Pig in 1946 it became a friends date Conny bacon I helped us develop the pizza recipe she and all these women we called the Supreme Court, they kept the secrets of the pizza, no deviation came true until today, well, just the fact that you are some kind of iconic pizzeria of Detroit, you know, when people talk about Detroit, they talk about Buddy's when they talk about Detroit Pizza, this is a style that they reference and it was all born here.

A lot of people go to Philadelphia and have a cheesesteak. When you come to Detroit, you have a friend's pizzeria, no doubt about it. It's stood the test of time, yes it's a great story of ups and downs, but Buddy's has been there in every sense for 71 years and pizza is what people love in Detroit and mrs. In Detroit style, like any other big pizza city, there always seems to be a pizza family tree. It all starts at a pizzeria and branches off from there because Square 11 1953 to open a new place Cloverleaf. I was lucky enough to sit down with Jack, Gus's son. who is in the back, right behind this, oh that's my father, my mother is on the other side, on the left side, he has been an inspiration to me and my entire family for as long as I can remember, tell me about your Father, tell me about Gus, what did he do?

Wow. my dad came here in '29 with about 18 dollars in his pocket until hi-oh he worked in the stone quarries when Ford announced the $10 a day job, he moved to Michigan and when the Detroit style pizza came out for which It's so famous. Well, in '44, my father and my mother's two uncles bought friends and now the war is coming to 1945 and everyone is coming back, everyone is opening fish and chip tours, right? I guess when we tried to make some pizza, he never told me. That day or ever in my life one or he picked the pan or how he picked a pan, all I know is they were working with my grandma's spent leftover peaches, how would you describe the Detroit style pizza your dad made is famous?

The center of their customers was a hundred times better than buying a sandwich and it would work out. The first thing we do is sprinkle a little bit of oregano on top, it's just to give it a little bit of flavor and we sour elegies, this is mozzarella and brick mix, yeah there's a pepperoni on top, now we used to put them all underneath in the old days, right , and our customers always say there is no pepperoni here, you can take a fork anywhere on the piece and find a pepperoni, but if they don't have it.

I don't see them, they don't believe it now, we're a pretty liberal way of popping, so the goal is to have a little bit of everything for everyone, yes sir, when we were doing a piece of red cheese, cheese and pepperoni and then we started. having people bring things like a customer came in one day and they got it yeah I should just put them in my piece so I only have two green peppers now they'll probably take about 20 minutes to bake this takes a little bit of time to bake get the structure you'll need a lot of time it's like baking at home you don't want to rush it and here we go Wow I can't wait to dig in well do it let's do it you have to eat one with I can't belong no one should take a corner mmm this is it really delicious, it's light, you know what I mean, it's got a lot of textures, but it's light, so you grew up on the beach in Rio, what jobs did you do?

Yes, I did everything I did. I washed the dishes I washed floors my dad used to make the dough with my hand because if we didn't have mixers in the old days just by talking to you I can tell that you are a very humble guy and the pizza that your family has created is good. to really resonate across the country you could say I'm happy yeah thanks dad another classic Detroit pizzeria is Louise and of course Louise started her pizza career with friends from the formica tables to the bottles of Chianti hanging on the walls.

Louise is a total throwback to the 70s. Louie passed away a few years ago, but his grandson Nick and his daughter Kathy run the restaurant just like he did, that's my grandfather, that's Louie himself, that's Louie, that's the boy. Wow, you look a lot like your grandfather, yes, that's what everyone says they know. Yes, yes, Louise is a very well-known pizzeria here in Detroit, how did it all start? My great uncle, Slash, the godfather owned that friend's apartment and he called my dad and told him that he needed help. I gave him 17 and he was made kitchen manager when your dad came here what was the style of pizza he was naked he tweeted: it was a square deep dish, true, but as far as I know, it was only two days before, huh, he said that Customers began calling in bags with cuts.

Cut peppers and cut whatever you want. It can always happen that grandfather was a total traditionalist. There are not too many dressings or too many themes. Too many toppings make a soggy pizza. How would you describe what a Louie's pizza looks like? A nice, thick, dark golden crust. walls a good amount of cheese so you get that nice cheesy flavor when you take a bite a slice will fill you up whoa look at that cheese this is more what everyone calls a fork and knife Delicious pizza Oh Mike doing the robot no, no, There's no wrong way, as long as it reaches your stomach, my dad always said to throw out the pork at night, the crust on the side is really my favorite, you know, I'll tell you Detroit has really good pizza and when it's about the classics best guys you guys are really doing it with me whoo magic is not magic it happens on thursday they open your old people how old do you have a little common sense since we opened I have never changed I have never changed not only have I worked on them from the same important way as cooking pizzas, yes, take care of your pans, now we spray, we can clean them, then really and then they are ready to start the next day, it is a very important job, I mean, if pizza stunts are not enjoyable, be extroverted piece in your dress there's more yeah there's more there's the storage area oh my gosh that used to be like a banquet hall supposedly falling into disrepair well someone has to play that piano right this is when we used to sell spaghetti by cubes.

I don't. I don't know who doesn't want a bucket of spaghetti. I visited the classics and they were really delicious, but I really want to see how other people interpret this Detroit-style atamora pizza. In Hamtramck, they have a unique approach to Detroit-style pizza. um our pizza is owned by four brothers, they grew up in Hamtramck and they wanted something they could put their own style on, so create a tandoori pizza, naga pizza with the naga pepper flavor that you'll find and that got me out of everyone. I'll meet Regular customers include Jason Hall, who is best known for running Slow Roll Detroit, a weekly community bike ride, but his most recent project is Pizza Focus.

Jason has challenged himself to eat at least one slice of pizza every day for an entire year we have here this is a square deep dish now we have pizza homemade Naga sauce chicken red onions and cilantro this is our tandoori in a normal manual preparation It has Teodoro sauce also made here chicken red onions I go around this corner yeah, yeah, oh, you're a corner boy, oh yeah, like me, oh wow, all that herb flavor really comes out, it's got some taste mm-hmm, crust is really good, we're in Hamtramck which is really right. slap next to Detroit when you look at the history of Hamtramck when you look back, at one point it was predominantly Polish and since then it has become this amazing mecca of your Muslim life, Bangladeshi life, all kinds of people mix here and there is where When you get pizzas like this this doesn't exist anywhere so you have to come to love if you want this so you eat a slice of pizza every day and then you write about it or something or well I'm not going to places. and saying this is good this is bad I just want to enjoy the pizza, right, the goal was to meet as many people as possible.

There are many places and involve people in my own city and talk about what is happening while eating pizza. This is the platform. This attracts people to the table, now at the table you can talk about people and that is what makes pizza and there was one more pizza to try: this is our dried fish pizza with our thin crust, it has pasta fish as a sauce and then it has dried shrimp and garlic flakes on top, onion and cilantro. I can say that I'm going to love it, I already smell it a little spicy, very spicy, well, I'm brave, you're alone in this, you know? which dried shrimp smells like something from Southeast Asia.

I'm going to eat a delicious black. It is very unique. I've never had anything like it when it comes to pizza, nothing, look there's a small one, it's actually not that bad, no. Well, I don't know if I'd say it's good, but it's not as bad as I thought. Obviously I'm here for pizza and we really wanted to go to the classic places in Detroit, a side of Detroit, which is mom dad. I'm also very excited to get past the Little Caesars headquarters and hear the story behind that Empire. I'm at the bottom of that storm with that and how it turns one pizza place in Garden City into two. major sports teams and I mean it's literally building five neighborhoods in Detroit.

When you come to Detroit, there's one pizza family that comes up again and again, Ilic in 1959. Mike and Marian Ilitch founded Little Caesars in the suburbs of Detroit. Today it is a The third largest pizza chain in the country loved to order a Detroit-style deep dish pizza. This year I have a deep dish pizza. I have the signature crazy bread, but I have a feeling I'll be eating more pizza when I get to headquarters, so this. it's the Innovation Center in Comerica Park, it has our research and development group as well as the quality control team, here we are, yeah, like you just walked into Little Caesars, this is our test kitchen, we have an oven two-story like we have in our pizzerias ours, however, is orange, well, while we're talking about background, all I see now is one of my favorite products, okay, crazy bread, wait, I don't have no questions, what makes crazy bread so crazy?

They're true, they're true, I have a trembling smell, oh, that garlic, garlic, I'm not at the breakfast of champions, how did all this start? Little Caesars started in 1959, our founders Mike and Marian Ilitch, you know, they decided they wanted to open a local pizzeria in Garden City Michigan, they opened the first Little Caesars Pizza treat, it's a treat that's known as Mr. Ilic wanted to call it pizza and Mrs. alert wasn't sure you know, she said, hey, I should have something Italian, you know, I should be like Caesar, she was sure her husband said, you know you haven't made much of yourself, so you're just a littleCaesar, so they call you Little.

Caesars Pizza is about, so a lot of what you guys do now is steeped in the tradition of that first store and mr. right, you know he passed away earlier this year, but he was very proud that we're going to use the original 19 59 recipe. One of the things that's unique to our Jo process is that it goes through a double proofing process, so this is like Shelley said after writing. or let it put it at room temperature. They are all fermented. We are going to square these doughs and they will turn white in these molds. here now we are going to make the deep dish, yes, yes, well, you know, being here in Detroit and making Detroit-style pizza, there has to be some pressure along with that, no, absolutely, there is some conversation out there if salsa needs to be at the top to be a traditional Detroit style.

What happens, what we found is that you put it on top for the pizza, you cook it so the flavors change, you're reducing the sauce essentially, so there we have it, now it's time to go. in the oven, yes, crazy bread fueled pizza, the R&D team put me to work. Your task is to create a pizza that we can potentially take nationally with Little Caesars, so we'd love to see what you come up with with some fun toppings. and let's say my pizza works great and you guys love it, do you pay me? The first thing I saw was the prosciutto and the fresh mozzarella that they have, yeah, so I'm going to grab a couple of these motorola balls and It's like just splitting them with artists and isn't it?

Yeah, you know what? When you break up that cheese by hand and give us that little irregularity, now is where we can have a little fun with our herbs and there's nothing better than tomato and basil, put this guy on top a little bit more of this olive oil, right, We can't go wrong with that, right, we can't go wrong with that, oh wow, okay, it fits really well, it smells pretty good, yeah. It definitely smells like fresh basil turned aromatic, it's elemental, yeah, and we're not done yet, yeah, another thing that caught my eye was arugula, something I've been seeing a lot lately is like dressing a salad, you know, it's a pennant take this lightly, build it very high here in the middle what we have here is the Panello at Little Caesars Test Kitchen Pizza Pizza, it was time to present my pizza to the judges on the left, we had EDH, senior vice president of global marketing and on the right, David Gray, vice president of franchise services, basically, we have your round pizza.

I layered some of the prosciutto that you had sprinkled with some fresh mozzarella and then made some vinaigrette and topped it off with the salads. Very good. So there are many layers of flavor. I overcome that absence. Some of the sweet notes. Some of the spicy notes. What are some of the things you guys look for when making a pizza like this? I think the biggest factor is usually Con, we do business in so many places, in so many different markets, so the question is how big of a population does this attract to pepperoni pizza, 90 percent of the population, so knowing that your mass, as we see it, is doing well.

If I add arugula, that expands the putt, you know, give me two hundred or it starts to shrink, the bigger the move, the fresher I can rotate those ingredients correctly and it has to be appealing to everyone, so the bacon is going to be appealing to everyone. , from the Midwest to the coast, but maybe an arugula rizzuto pizza might appeal to you, you know certain cities in the country, so the next time you see it has bacon, it'll be our idea, no. problem, he decides whether or not you know she has the appeal, she gives us something we really like and then we have to decide whether or not we can make a million and a half of them or however much, it's a constant challenge: When do you know you have a home run on your hands within that process?

It's just that when they test it here as a knowledge, it's about eight weeks after we implemented it, it's a developer who has to call purchasing and says we need more products, thank you. to you for inviting me to the table and taking time out of your day. I'm trying my pizza, thank you very much, sungold. Wow, here's a delicious one. I am an Eastern Market, one of the largest and oldest historic public markets in the world. In the United States, across the street is Supino pizzeria run by Dave Mancini. This place is unique because they serve East Coast style pizza.

It's the kind of thing that, like I said, there wasn't a lot of that around here when I first opened and it's still not that Detroit style and it's not the Troy style. I keep reading about places opening in Las Vegas in New York. I just opened a New York style place in Charlotte, but it's a good style. pizza, well not only do you have the Eastern Market but you also have an employee who grows some amazing produce, yes she is one of these local farmers, yes we are Glen and Alison, they run corriander farms and now they grow amazing things and they head there and Check it, check it, if you want to walk around here, you can see part of the production space and then we do intensive vegetable production, so we have beets here, lettuce here, the herbs are further east, all of this was living place.

So in the '80s and '90s there were six houses here that were demolished and we bought this piece of land that's about half an acre. We have almost half of this basic production, so let's take some things in the piece once I shared some. Tomatoes, yeah, and then these guys that you know are those, that's what you are. I have some that have matured, yes, that's the calibration, yes, yes, yes. It's great as a restaurant owner to be able to work so closely with the farmer like this, how does that make you feel? It's amazing, when I first opened Supino, you heard about a couple of urban farms here and there, you know, almost ten years ago, but it was hard to understand it like there was no good communication and now I know there are people like when now They are clearly committed to this process and they do it well and good and we are choosing these things and we will take them a mile away to my restaurant, it's like it doesn't get any better than that.

It doesn't get any better than that, the restaurant is full right now. Dave is in the back making pizza. I'm going to go back there and make a pot, we're just making a cheese base, okay. I make a combination of shredded knots and We're also going to put some fresh mozzarella in this, but just a little bit of sauce because we're using the tomatoes, so we have the chopped calabrese and a pepper, it's good, we roast the San Marzano tomatoes. with your time and a little. tarragon too from Gwen's garden over there, although those ovens that he uses, those Marcel ovens, they have stones on them and they really get saturated with heat and they cook a really nice, even pizza, so the pizza really looks great, it looks beautiful, this is going to be a Perfect, incredible, no, this is a belief, it is a neuromuscular Z of the north face of Mount Etna, perfect for this, thank you, thank you, madam.

Wendy Wendy and thank you this is great many of your customers here told us it's your crust that makes it special. Here you want everything to be fine without a good crust, nothing scared, no matter what you put on it, it won't. It tastes good, it's nice and light, the tarragon really leaves a nice aroma. I love tarragon with tomatoes. I love it, it blends very well, very French. I guess so, you are right when I first opened Pinot. I knew I wanted to open downtown. My family thought so. crazy, you know, you can open in Detroit and in a gourmet place, which I hate the word gourmet anyway, but I thought no, it's just where I've been for 20 years and I knew I would do it here and I'm glad I did. , couldn't be a better place, right across the street from the register, yes sir, two men, my time in Detroit has been amazing, the pizza is great, the people are great and I had one last stop for myself.

Larry, welcome to the café du monde, you're going to my club. I have been here since 1985 and have enjoyed every day. Larry comes from a long line of speakeasy owners in Detroit. He always has a story to tell. Here is a photo of my grandmother. Michael Jackson Burt. Get out of here, so when they say Russ, the smile, Larry can talk to you about pizza too. Our parts in Detroit are so good you wouldn't even try to compete with them. I swear to God, our pieces are great key pieces in Detroit for seven days. a week from a different ethnic group and I have a completely different taste and experience.

That's Detroit, that's where I love this city and the people of this city. We brought you something for you and your family to share. Yes, my favorite, yes, that's it. man, someone's been a snitch, I swear to God and you know better, I call it soul, the city is special, you know, and I really met some of the people here and it really opened my eyes, but that's Detroit, you leave. I bring all the drinks please