Until yesterday, we had somehow never enjoyed a pizza from the Chicago-area mainstay, Rosati's. Enter pizza hero, @matthalley82381, who corrected this oversight. He picked up a deep dish pepperoni on a work trip in central Illinois and brought it us in St. Louis. A small pizza, but so heavy! The bright, chunky tomatoes were the true standout, making us desperately miss the easy access to these massive, delicious pies that our former home once afforded. Matt's a true friend of the Pizza Hounds, and we could not be more grateful.
One of the problems with getting behind on writing and posting is the fact that you start to lap yourself. This evening we visited one of our favorite pizzerias in the whole world, Pantera's Pizza in O'Fallon, Missouri. And we haven't even posted about our last trip there a few months ago. Nor have we written about the two or three trips before that. Sigh...we'll get to those eventually. But we must emphasize that Pantera's is pure classic suburban Americana. Few other pizzerias in the St. Louis area capture such a heartwarming family-friendly feeling. Pantera's has called the current storefront (for many years a few doors down from the shopping center's now-gone anchor, K-Mart) home since 1981 when Al Kertz and an associate opened the counter-service pizza parlor as one of the young chain's earliest franchises. The chain grew quickly thereafter, then suffered a huge fall by the 1990s. Through it all, the parlor survived through Kertz's hard work and determination, and to this day he alone runs this Pantera's as a completely independent operation. It's one of the first pizzerias I ever visited (I attended a friend's fifth birthday party there well over thirty years ago), and the space comfortingly has changed very little since. Tonight, almost every booth and table was full, as was the small game room, with kids and parents enjoying a Saturday pizza night out right around 6 pm. This place is perfect, and our visit tonight was yet another reminder.
We hadn't been to Erio's in a few years, not since Ernie and I visited on a cold night in 2015 or 2016. We were definitely looking forward to a non-Provel pizza for a change, and Erio's was a great choice. All sausage, half pepperoni and half anchovy and shrimp. Extra cheese and extra sauce, too. Good, homemade crust. This pizza was very popular with the littlest Pizza Hound, with this being her first visit to the nearly half-century-old suburban pizzeria.
Tonight, we headed out amongst St. Louis County's working-class northwest suburbs--just past the Inner Belt and south of Lambert Airport--to the longstanding Erio's on Woodson Road. Here lengthy strip malls mix with modest postwar single-family homes, some lovingly updated with vinyl siding. Erio's is the namesake of Erio Balassi, who, along with Pietro Pulizzi, started the restaurant in Florissant's Surrey Plaza shopping center on Lindbergh in 1971. A second location, this one in Woodson Terrace, arrived a few years later. In the early 1980s, Balassi and Pulizzi split their partnership, with Balassi taking this location and Pulizzi taking the Florissant location, which he moved to St. Peters in the early 1990s. Erio's pizza is not the typical Provel-topped St. Louis-style you get in most places in North County. Instead, a more straightforward, almost New York-style is the product here. It reminded us a lot of Pizza-A-Go-Go. It's popular, too. On this Saturday night, the dining room was absolutely packed. It was so busy that we didn't ask to talk to anyone about the business's history. Maybe next time we'll get a chance. In the meantime, we have a great pizza.
Introducing a friend to St. Louis-style pizza and the wonders of Provel? North County is the place. After a fantastic stop at Monte Bello the night before (so good, but no locally-beloved gooey, processed goodness), tonight we drove @priebnhox, our old friend from our early Chicago Pizza Hound days, to the landmark Angelo's in Black Jack. It was a success. Wonderful homemade pizza the way it has been done for decades. Friendly service, too. We love Angelo's and we're proud to share it. New sign, too.
We hadn't had a Chicago-style thin crust pizza in what seemed like forever, so when we were out in St. Charles County earlier tonight to celebrate the wedding of two great friends, we swung by Nancy's on the way out of town. Nancy's--now dubbed Nancy's Chicago Pizza--seems to be making a push far outside of Chicagoland, setting franchises, spreading the word, and making a run for the crown that Lou Malnati's should have taken long ago but hasn't even bothered to try for. It's not easy to feel find this kind of pizza in St. Louis--the kind of pizza you can find almost every neighborhood shop in Chicago--so we're glad dropped in for a little of what helped define the Chicago Pizza Hound from the beginning.
Our pizza tonight came from a North County classic, Roberto's. We've been to this decades-old destination in northwestern Florissant many times for the fantastic crispy St. Louis-style pizza. Somehow this place never gets mentioned on the "lists," but it should. The menu is full of dependable and reasonably-priced Italian American dishes, and the staff is always friendly. We love the sublime Roberto's Supreme, topped with everything you can think of, including shrimp and anchovies. But don't worry if you aren't a fan of those toppings: the staff asks you upfront if you want them or not. We do, of course. The more the better. Roberto's is one of our favorites.
I am proud to say I have a piece in this wonderful new book, The St. Louis Anthology, edited by Ryan Schuessler and released by Belt Publishing. My entry, "Carpenter, Branch," is a day in the life during my short time at the St. Louis Public Library. We attended the release party and got to meet some of the other authors who help make this city so great. If you are interested, you can pick one up at @beltpub, not to mention @stlouispubliclibrary and @stlouiscountylibrary, as well!
Going through some old photos we came across this, our one and only shot of the Pantera's Pizza on Manchester Avenue in Maplewood, a community just southwest of the city-county line. The once mighty Pantera's chain was a fixture in the St. Louis area in the 1980s, selling a relatively thick crust pie-cut pizza topped with mozzarella (not Provel) in over two dozen parlors across the city and county to outposts in the farther corners of the region. Today, there are only three independently owned shops left, and thankfully they haven't changed much: one in Hazelwood in north St. Louis County; one in O'Fallon, Missouri, in business since 1981; and one in Edwardsville, Illinois. We've been to each multiple times, but we never made it to what just a few years ago was a fourth remaining location, this one on Manchester. Photo from late July 2014. Pantera's Pizza in Maplewood would close just a few months later. Today, it's a cellphone store and life for us as St. Louisans is not better for it. Pantera's serves as an alternate history to the St. Louis pizza story that deserves to be remembered and celebrated.
