Talk:3142: (City)-Style Pizza

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)