Oregon is a great place for wine, salmon, and hiking through scenic forests, but the best pizza in the United States? It might sound crazy, but that’s the claim made by the authors of Modernist Pizza, an ambitious three-volume collection coming this October. (For the geographically challenged, Portland is roughly located on the second pepperoni slice from the top in the upper left corner of the United States–shaped pie above.)
The 1,696 pages covering recipes, techniques, and history will qualify as perhaps the most comprehensive look at one of the world’s favorite foods. Co-authors Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya are teasing out the collection with the news that after visiting 250 pizzerias around the world—there are separate sections on Naples and Sao Paolo, Brazil in the book—and consuming 800 pizzas, they find that Portland ranks highest for delicious, innovative pizzas in the U.S.
Modernist Pizza will be published October 5.
The marketing ploy is new for the Modernist Cuisine franchise, which previously earned attention for the sheer ambition of its projects, starting with the 2011 multi-volume collection Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, continuing through to 2017’s Modernist Bread. Myhrvold, the former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft, fuses his analytical mind with his penchant for dramatic, high-quality food photography in each of the efforts, and they’ve become a fixture on bookshelves of accomplished chefs and food writers around the world.
So does the authors’ tease stand up? Could it really be true that Portland’s booming pizza scene is better than New York’s more established one, New Haven’s groundbreaking one, or Los Angeles’s nascent pizza community, where La Cucina Italian has found pop-ups where young pizzaioli experiment with melding the city’s global flavors with well-prepared pies?
In media interviews, Myhrvold swears that the declaration is research-based. He admitted to Bloomberg last week that the idea of a best pizza city is a “fuzzy concept,” and added that he and Migoya sought a scene that had not only “multiple choices of great pizzerias,” but “different styles.”
In Portland, which, it’s worth noting, is a few hours south of the Modernist team’s home base of Seattle, they found acclaimed spots like Apizza Scholls and Ken’s Artisan Pizza, as well as Lovely’s Fifty Fifty, where wood-fired pies are topped with local, seasonal ingredients, often without any sauce—and with a side of ranch dressing for dipping (for $2 extra). The authors also praise Cathy Whims’ Nostrana (read our recent interview with her), which they point out isn’t a pizzeria but an Italian restaurant that makes great pies.
Smoked Salmon Pizza, no doubt big in the Pacific Northwest, from Modernist Pizza.
Of course, choosing Portland is a clever controversy-stirring way to promote a forthcoming book, but the authors seem sincere and did their homework, visiting pizza hotspots from Brooklyn to Detroit to San Francisco, as well as classic pie and slice joints in New Haven, Philly, and Chicago.
They praise all the right pizzerias, telling Bloomberg that the New York City area’s current standouts include Lucali and L’Industrie in Brooklyn, Kesté in Manhattan, and Jersey City’s Razza, all of which La Cucina Italian has highlighted as well. And they decry the overrated standbys, and the classic places that have gone downhill.
So should pizza lovers plan on booking a trip to Portland to try the pies listed in Modernist Pizza? As someone who lived in the city for years and who’d recommend a trip there regardless of the pizza, I’d certainly encourage it. For those that need more convincing, the surely hot-ticket pizza book collection, which features 1,000 recipes and much more, is available for pre-order ($425) now in advance of its October 5 release.