Chicago Lands At No. 14 On Best Pizza Cities List Topped By Detroit

CHICAGO – Chicagoans are always up for a good debate but when it comes to ranking some other city’s pizza over the pie that is created here whether tavern style or deep dish – well, those are fighting words.

Especially when if another Midwestern city that has established itself as Chicago’s rival on the sporting scene rolls in at No. 1.

A personal finance website, Anytime Estimate, recently declared Detroit as the top pizza city in the country on a list that laughingly logged Chicago in at No. 14. While Chicago is accustomed to duking it out with New York and New Haven, Conn., for the best pie around, Anytime Estimate ranked Detroit and Cleveland as the two pizza capitols of the world, using different metrics than more food-centric qualifiers than other lists.

Ohio, in fact, claimed two of the top three spots on The Best Pizza Cities list, which uses categories such as “average cheese pizza price”, the “annual cost of weekly cheese pizza” the percentage of annual income spent on pizza, the number of pizza joints per 100,000 residents, the number of independent pizza spots per 100,000 residents, the average miles to a pizza spot and something the authors of the list deemed a pizza passion score.

With all of those things considered, Chicago came in at No. 14 ranked behind such pizza heavyweights as Indianapolis (No. 6), St. Louis (No. 8), Baltimore (No. 11) and Minneapolis (No. 13). Chicago fell on the list just ahead of Nashville, but finished eight spots ahead of New York, which constantly claims Chicago-style pizza should be considered more of a lasagna than anything else.

The rankings based Chicago's score on the fact that an average cheese pizza costs $9.36 while the average resident spends 0.72 percent of their income on pizza. Chicago was found to have 6.8 pizza joints per 100,000 residents and finished with a pizza passion score of 99.7.

The study claims Detroit is "Dough City" when it comes to topping the list of U.S. Pizza Cities , a claim that Patch recently debunked in an opinion piece which columnist Mark Konkol characterized Detroit-style pizza as fancy garlic bread.

The new list comes out five years after the press secretary for former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted that Chicago's pizza is indeed superior to New York's. Eric Phillips based his review on a Chicago pizza staple, Pequod's, which Phillips said the "best pizza in the United States and it's not even close."

He added: "It's like Salisbury steak vs. actual steak."

Comedian and late-night host Jon Stewart had it out with Lou Malnati's - another Chicago pizza go-to in 2013. After Stewart and Marc Malnati squared off after Stewart referred to deep-dish pizza as an "above-ground marinara swimming pool for rats", Stewart finally conceded that the Chicago version was "very tasty" after Malnati hand-delivered one of his restaurant's offerings to the set of the Daily Show.

Now, comes this list, which is certainly sure to draw the ire of pizza-loving Chicagoans who won't allow the No. 14 ranking and Detroit's top spot to set well.