3142: (City)-Style Pizza

<City>-Style Pizza

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Title text: If you want to see true audacity, do an image search for 'Altoona-style pizza.'

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Explanation

Pizza is one of the most popular foods in the United States and a number of major cities have regional variations on pizza, which have come to be named after the city. New York–style pizza and Chicago-style pizza are two of the most well known. New York-style pizza is characterized by a thin, flexible crust topped with tomato sauce, followed by various toppings, then topped with mozzarella cheese. Chicago-style pizza has a much thicker, bread-like crust which is typically topped with melted cheese, with a mixture of sauce and toppings added on top.

This comic contains a chart that compares the tastiness of pizza styles with the size of the city in the name. They generally span a broad range, and the upper limit tends to be pretty consistent, suggesting that cities of all sizes can produce good pizza. The smallest cities are shown as having the least possibility for a good pizza named after them. (The apex is shown as being for mid-sized cities toward the smaller end of the spectrum, but no explanation is given for this — possibly Randall may have a particular favorite from a mid-sized city.)

The lower end of the range shows much more variation. The largest cities are shown as being incapable of having bad pizza as their speciality, with the worst examples still being okay. The smaller the cities are, the more potential there is for a bad pizza to qualify for the name. This may be due to the fact that large cities tend to have many restaurants. As a result, there is more chance of one of them producing a decent variant, and more competition for which one will become synonymous with the city. Smaller cities with fewer eating options might accept lower quality choices because they lack options.

At the lowest end of the range are very small cities with terrible regional pizza. The caption jokes that this is to due to "bored restaurant owners" deliberately making up bad pizza varieties as a "fun prank" on visitors. The implication is that some local pizza styles are so bad that they could only have been created as a joke, and even the people who created them don't think they're appealing.

New York-style pizza is indicated at the top of the city size axis (New York City being the largest city in the US), and near the top of the tastiness axis, but in the middle of the range of cities of its size. New York City is where pizza was first popularized in the US, having been brought by Italian immigrants in the 19th century. The style from New York has been highly influential over pizza throughout the country, and is generally acknowledged to be appealing to most people.

The title text gives a specific example of a terrible pizza from a small city, describing Altoona-style pizza as "true audacity". Created in the Altoona Hotel in Altoona, Pennsylvania, it has a thick square of bread-like Sicilian-style crust, covered with tomato sauce, bell peppers, and salami and a slice of American cheese. Not only does Randall implicitly find this to be highly unappetizing, but considers it audacious to even call it pizza. The structure of this dish is very odd for pizza (looking more like an open-faced sandwich), the toppings are eccentric, and the use of American cheese to top pizza is so strange as to border on culinary heresy. This is presumably the type of "pizza" that Randall believes could only be created as a joke.

Transcript

This is one of 27 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[A graph.]

[The x and y axes have no unit markings, and are labeled:]

[X axis: City size →]

[Y axis: Tastiness of "<city>-style pizza" ↑]

[A shaded region is bounded by a lower bound and an upper bound. The upper bound has a slight curve up corresponding to a smallish city, but is otherwise mostly flat. The lower bound appears on the X axi] close to the left, evens out to being almost flat in the middle, and rises toward the right.]

[An arrow points to the right end of the shaded area, with the label:]

New York up here somewhere

[A label is in the middle of the shaded region at a medium X value. Many arrows point outward from the text, which reads:]

various controversial regional specialties

[An arrow points to the region with a low x and y-value, where the line for the lower bound is missing. This region is labeled:]

towns with bored restaurant owners who have come up with a fun prank to play on visitors

Trivia

A remarkable spike in Google searches for Altoona-style pizza was observed at the publication date of this comic, as can be observed on Google Trends.

The original comic's title invokes an encoding error in terms of HTML rendering, and it was copied to this wiki page. It reads "<City>-Style Pizza", which can be interpreted by web browsers and scrapers as containing an HTML tag for a "City" element for some unknown semantic/formatting effect. Being not defined or implemented, this 'tag' ends up being ignored and the remaining content is rendered as just "-Style Pizza".

It is not the first time that Randall has accidentally clashed with HTML-rendering issues.

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Discussion

Altoona-style is listed first in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_in_the_United_States#Variations but that's because the list is alphabetical. Barmar (talk) 21:12, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

I prefer +style pizza. SDSpivey (talk) 21:16, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Not a fan of electrons as a topping then? 82.13.184.33 08:37, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Imo, positron pizza is far better. Some people won’t appreciate it though, as it disintegrates [in] your mouth. Logalex8369 (talk) 15:28, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Altoona-style most literally looks like a sandwich except cheese instead of a top bun《プロキシ》(XKCD中毒者) 21:54, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, a bunch of open-faced sandwiches side-by-side. 47.248.235.170 22:07, 15 September 2025 (UTC)Pat

It looks most like a heart attack in waiting. 82.13.184.33 09:42, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Wildly accurate description《プロキシ》(XKCD中毒者) 21:40, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

">sandwich" not a dealbreaker ">too much cheese" well that can be balanced if ">american cheese" ruined 158.91.163.43 19:59, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Isn't that similar to French bread pizza? It's just one half of a French bread bun with sauce, cheeze, and toppings on the top. Barmar (talk) 16:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

On a related note, locally (hint: absolutely nowhere near the place mentioned), there's a business advertising "genuine New York-style bagels". The juxtaposition of the "genuine" claim and yet the acknowledgement that they are only of the given style always makes me wonder what worth the genuineness truly has, with an ocean's-width of distance between any physical manifestation of New Yorkification and what we have here. 92.17.62.87 23:12, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

I thought he was talking about Altoona Iowa (less than half the size of Altoona Pennsylvania). Look up “Altoona Iowa pizza” and one of the top hits will tell you it’s ranked one of the worst in the nation. You see, in Iowa, they lay out the dough, put on the ‘toppings’ (ahem) then dump on so much cheese that you can’t see any of the ‘toppings’ (ahem) anymore. When I came home from college in another state, I had to teach my mother how to make good pizza. 2607:FB91:1D15:883A:11:B0B6:84B2:3C0C 23:49, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes. It is truly amazing how many people eat pizza, but when making pizza themselves they put the cheese on top. My mom did this and i did this until my girlfriend (now wife) asked me "how many pizzas have you ever eaten at an italian restaurant where the cheese was on top and you could not see the toppings?" A question that left me baffled. And convinced me. But I remember vividly the night where us and a bunch of friends met to make pizza, and my wife and me got into heated arguments with our friends about where to put the cheese, until everybody did it their own way (of course, our pizza was better). --2A02:8071:B84:FE60:20AE:FA46:3981:11E 19:27, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

If I feel the need to add extra cheese to a pizza (c.f. the other day, some Blue Shropshire...yum!), I never put it on prior to cooking. Either entirely after or just before I've finished heating/reheating it. 'Base cheese' (the good stuff) and lesser 'cheese toppings' (usually less so) can get melted into oblivion and still do their job, but adding a little thinly slice Stilton (or even some generousy gloops of extra-creamy, and crawling-off-the-plate, Somerset Brie, which doesn't even need heating to be semiliquid) is best done after the fact. And still-chilled cheese atop hot pizza conveys its own particular culinary delights, just as with my prefered "bacon-and-brie" part-toasted smörgåsbord. 82.132.246.186 15:36, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Oh, definitely. Like there is a huge difference between a toasted cheese sandwich (make a sandwich, toast it, the aim being to have slightly melted cheese (and various other constituents as might be chosen) between toasted bread) and cheese on toast (do not grill your bread-and-cheese, unless you either do not value the roof of your mouth vs. the molten cheese or are content to let it cool down enough to no longer be tastily warm throughout). 92.17.62.87 22:06, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Well at least THIS one was about a kind of pi. I guess pi does round to 3.142. 138.88.96.2 00:16, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Shame he missed out on Pittsburgh's 'specialty' with this... since they had the sheer audacity to call it 'Ohio Valley Pizza'... Which I hadn't even *heard* of, let alone actually seen, in 40 years of living in Cincinnati! -Edit: Turns out it originates from Steubenville, which had he named it 'Steubenville style pizza' would've put it way down on the bottom left somewhere. -Tiron 2600:2B00:934E:6200:2186:FE87:5D5E:1AB7 01:18, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a way of displaying article titles that have non-standard characters in them. Could something similar be done here? Dogman15 (talk) 04:05, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

they do, but it doesn't work. DISPLAYTITLE doesn't support <> symbols. raeb 13:29, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Not even with <nowiki> tags? Dogman15 (talk) 09:52, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

The article is describing the Altoona style pizza, but Randall is calling on the viewer to look it up on Google images because the picture is likely more offensive than the description. I don't know what the wiki policy is but a picture in the article would do a much better job at explaining than anything Randall may or may not like about the ingredients. 46.144.8.194 06:43, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Surely it's no coincidence that XKCD 3142 is about pie. Gmcgath (talk) 11:43, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I hope it is a coincidence, because I'd like to think that Randall knows better than to call a pizza – a dish that isn't a pie – a "pie". Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 12:53, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Says the person whose name is a pancake that calls itself a pudding. 82.13.184.33 13:54, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

A yorkshire pudding is made similarly to a pancake, but it ends up more like a bun. And the British just call any dessert a "pudding", though I don't see how a yorkshire pudding could be a dessert... PDesbeginner (talk) 17:22, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Not like anything that I would call a 'bun'. I would give you 'halfway between a pancake and a frittata'. 'Pudding' doesn't just mean dessert - it can refer to a thing more like a sausage that is boiled/steamed (black pudding, white pudding, etc.) which is the older meaning of the word. Even then, though, Yorkshire pudding is nothing like that either. 82.13.184.33 13:28, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

https://bubbablueandme.com/delicious-filling-ideas-sweet-yorkshire-pudding-recipes/

...just the first of many links found when looking for YPs being used as the base for a sweet dish. (Though I'm more of a traditionalist than that, myself.)

And perhaps wander south a bit, into Derbyshire, and have a discussion about Bakewell and its famous pudding/tart/pie/flan thing(s)! ;) 82.132.246.186 15:36, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Randall suggests that pizza quality correlates with city size. That means Brazilians were right all along, and the best pizza is from São Paulo. MCBastos (talk) 14:01, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

No - it's completely outclassed by Chongqing Pizza. 82.13.184.33 14:43, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I had never heard of pizza styles "being named after a city" when I was living in Europe or South America. Is that just a USA thing? Ralfoide (talk) 17:31, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

No, several regions in Italy also have pizza styles named after them (e.g. Naples, Sicily & Rome) --Btx40 (talk) 19:07, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Some examples of the more popular 'City'-Style pizza types I know of in the US:

New York Style 

Huge, round, thin, floppy crust cut into a small number of huge slices. Pretty much have to fold the pieces lengthwise in order to get enough rigidity to eat them.

Chicago Style 

Aka 'deep dish'. Thick, round crust. Almost like an actual pie, but open top.

Detroit Style 

Rectangular rather than round, cut into squares. Medium Crust.

St. Louis style 

Round, thin, firm-to-crisp crust. Cut into squares... Ish(it's round!) Toppings go nearly to the edge, and the outer crust is approximately the same thickness as it is under the toppings.

-Tiron 2600:2B00:934E:6200:327C:A6EE:BDF7:E40F 19:44, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

St Louis style pizza is topped with Provel cheese, which adheres to tooth enamel. Persistently. -- Smith (talk) 04:26, 22 September 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Feel the need to add here an Australian translation/interpretation, having been to two of those cities so far. New York Style Pizza is a huge wheel of pita bread with grease spots on it they call "cheese" and circles of cardboard they call "sausage", everything flat as a tack and tasteless as well as floppy. Chicago Style Pizza, on the other hand, is tomato soup in a bread crust, and quite tasty. And all the American pizzas rarely have more than two toppings, which is a bit weird, but it's what they do... Sort of like their hamburgers, I guess. 124.150.67.115 05:16, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Currently the explanation describes the "<City>" glitch as an encoding error, and that doesn't strike me as quite correct. The problem is that it's not supposed to be "encoded" at all, but because it appears to be an HTML tag, it's being treated as encoded. BunsenH (talk) 20:30, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Changed it to "invokes" the error, unless you can think of a better word. Also added a few extra bits. And also also moved it over into Trivia, for not being an explanation to the comic; only the way the comic page may have been inadvertently presented to us. 82.132.247.226 16:44, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Please don't take it badly, but you should start calling it something else. Because it's not, well, _pizza_. --2001:16B8:CC2E:B600:ECF3:65DF:9AC4:63E6 20:30, 18 September 2025 (UTC) 2604:2D80:DA83:DE00:5547:BA7B:AF4A:454E 00:21, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

No mention of New Haven Pizza? Sacrilege. 2604:2D80:DA83:DE00:5547:BA7B:AF4A:454E 00:21, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Incorrect page name

I’m pretty sure this comic is intended to be titled “<City>-Style Pizza”, as it is labeled in the HTML of xkcd.com (notably, xkcd.com itsel uses “-Style Pizza” for the <title> elements and the rss/atom feeds, but not for the visible title. (But there, the “<city>” gets swallowed by the browser)--Nleanba (talk) 21:49, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

What about moving this page to 3142: (City)-Style Pizza or similar? --Birdlover32767 (talk) 16:25, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I agree that 3142:(City)-Style Pizza would be appropriate. I don't have an exact analogy from Wikipedia, which also can't include < or > symbols in an article title, but they would use a similar substitution in a similar situation. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Forbidden characters. --208.59.176.206 15:52, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

I was tempted to go ahead and do this move, but I'm not sure what might break. Will previous and next navigation break, or the link in the "All comics" page? Or would those recover after a short time, like an hour? I guess one way to find out is to just do it... Orion205 (talk) 21:40, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

The previous/next links point at 3142, which currently redirect to 3142: -Style Pizza (as does the jump-off of -Style Pizza).

Changing "3142: -Style Pizza" to something else would of course need the changing of the redirect from the number-only (and title-only) page. Anything that just used the number would get here if you do that. Anything going to the full "number: title"-style pagename (e.g. the two "&D" pages, that someone linked here) would need editing. As would anything (though I don't know of any, off-hand) that link via the title-only intermediary, because you'd want to change/move that to being the 'correct'-title-only as well, as well as update where it redirects.

Alternately, make sure the correctly titled page has the contents and (replacement) wrongly-titled page redirects to the correct one, but that's a messy half-arsed solution that's not ideal. Or necessary as a backstop time-saving answer to all the thousands of 'links inward' it doesn't have. So don't do that.

Oh, and remember to move this Talk: page, too! 82.132.246.204 23:02, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

 ✓ Done  --FaviFake (talk) 12:59, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

<p id="pizzas" />The current description for New York and Chicago style pizza just sounds like a description of pizza in general, aside from the specific crust thickness. "topped with tomato sauce, followed by various toppings, then topped with mozzarella cheese" that's just a normal pizza, and "various toppings" is so vague that again, almost any pizza qualifies. Never heard people describing the simplest and most common pizza type there is as being a New York style in particular, are there really no other distinct characteristics to it?

Also I'm relieved but also disappointed that the Altoona-style pizza isn't an all-tuna pizza. THAT would qualify as a true audacity! PotatoGod (talk) 17:47, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

(Why did this get lumped into the Incomplete tag. Better, surely, to just briefly anchor a link to here rather than make an intrusively unreliable paste up there...)

I'm no expert, but my impression is that New York-stlye and Chicago-style pizzas are the respective types of crust. Because you can get "New York-style <topping type> pizza" and "Chicago-style <toppings> pizza" for pretty much any topping.

At least in the wider-world. Whether the native Nouveau Yorvikians or Chicagoans have additional ideas/preferences about the preparation (tomato base, actual toppings, the crust being stuffed with anything, etc), I think there's still likely to be much unique variation between establishements. Either in order for each to claim that 'theirs' is the true original <City>-style one, just an allowable deviation in 'house style' or even because their particular formulation has elements of 'secret recipe' to it. (Smaller places might have just the one place and happily, like the alleged-Altoona, have 'perfected' a whole-pizza 'standard', at least until they change their chief pizza-chef (or he/she decides to experiment a bit). But I very much doubt that even the respective 'Mobs' of two big cities could possibly strongarm their whole respective city into anything more than the general outline of teh product. 92.17.62.87 22:06, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

:(Why did this get lumped into the Incomplete tag. Better, surely, to just briefly anchor a link to here rather than make an intrusively unreliable paste up there...)

So that people don’t have to click a link to see whats wrong. Please feel free to use an anchor, I don’t mind. --FaviFake (talk) 15:53, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

"Incomplete" doesn't even apply here (or, indeed for "too technical, shorten it!" complaints sometimes given), and tends to require scrolling around anyway to work out what the grief is about in a long article - as it may well be in an 'overcomplete' example. But possibly something else could be used here to better target such things. 82.132.244.45 00:37, 25 September 2025 (UTC)
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