California’s got the upscale, eclectic toppings, from arugula to Peruvian blue potatoes. Chicago’s got the deep dish, a solid brick of dough, cheese, sauce and toppings that pizza purists insist isn’t even a pizza but a casserole. New York’s got its thin crust, flat, wide slices that elicit more upskirt photos on New York foodie blogs than Britney Spears (pizza upskirt: the bottom of the crust). I haven’t found a place in Honolulu that serves Chicago-style pizza, but a cursory tour of bars, bakeries and pizza joints in search of a good slice (or personal pan) of pizza turns up an eclectic assortment. Noticeably missing from a lot of places is our namesake, the Hawaiian, a combination of ham and pineapple, which in our adult life is probably considered as passe as Chuck E. Cheese.

Bar 35

Starting a pizza tour with Bar 35’s pizza is like starting a sushi tour with a California roll. It’s far from classic (where are the pools of grease?) but this pizza is familiar to me, having grown up with California cuisine sensibilities. This often means breaking down comfort foods like pizza, (over)analyzing each ingredient and throwing a gourmet and sometimes bizarre spin on it. At Bar 35, pepperoni becomes prosciutto. The standard doughy crust becomes exceedingly thin and crisp, almost cracker-like. Tomato sauce becomes a sweet chili sauce.

The pizzas here take you on a strange international culinary tour: from the Sweet Bangkok, which has lup cheong, sweet chili sauce and cilantro, to the Gyromatic, topped with lamb and beef gyro meat and tzatziki sauce, to the Deep Forest that includes relatively staid ingredients like prosciutto and mushrooms. No matter which one you pick, the server will tell you it’s her favorite, which I understand now doesn’t have to be a lie.

The other thing that’s great about Bar 35? Not the loud, dark, front room, but the provocatively-lit booths along the hallway where I can eat pungent herbs and onions to seduce my date, or the outside patio where I feel Euro-chic with my internationally influenced pizza served in a beer garden atmosphere.

Fendu Boulangerie

Leave it to the new bakery in town to beat the pizza-oven doors off every other crust in town. Even under the heavy weight of cheese, the crust is thin and crisp, and the edges are thick, chewy, blistered goodness. The Classic pizza is a combination of three cheeses—pecorino, whole milk mozzarella and parmesan reggiano—yielding a rich, savory blend of flavor. In case three cheeses isn’t indulgent enough, there’s the Five Gourmet Cheeses pizza, with the three cheeses above plus cheddar and gorgonzola. There’s a generous amount of tangy tomato sauce to help cut the richness, but really, are you ordering five cheeses on your pizza in the pursuit of balance?

J.J. Dolan’s

Jay Niebuhr, the co-owner who tosses pizza dough with the flair of a Benihana’s cook/performer, is quick to tell you that J.J. Dolan’s is an Irish pub with New York pizza from two guys in Chinatown, Honolulu. It’s a dizzying statement made even more difficult to parse when you’re watching circles of pizza dough whirl in the air. As much as it looks like they toss pizza dough just to show off, the purpose is to create a smooth, uniform circle that bakes into a thin, crisp crust, one of the trademarks of New York-style pizza. This is one of the few pizza places in town where you can get just a slice or a whole pizza, in one size only: a 14-inch large. The ratio of cheese, sauce and crust is perfect at J.J.’s and the application of toppings shows an expert, restrained hand. But even more perfect is the ultimate combination offered at this stylish yet casual bar: beer and pizza.

Boston’s North End Pizza Bakery

As far as I know, there’s no official Boston-style pizza, and Boston itself is hardly a mecca for pizza, with college students looking for a place that delivers at 3am as one of their main criteria. So what’s with all the “Boston” pizza places? Who knows, but Boston’s North End Pizza is a reliable place to get a “slice”—one that’s bigger than some whole pizzas I’ve had (and the same price). I like being able to pick my slice from the glass display case and the “Big Red” is one of many appealing options. It’s a combination of spinach, tomato, mushroom and garlic, the pungent aroma of which precedes even the first bite of pizza. The slices are huge and floppy, ideal for folding in half, which protects the roof of your mouth from being burned off by bubbling cheese grease.

Antonio’s New York Pizzeria

The last time I ate so much cheese in a day was when I discovered string cheese as a kid. But before I can put an end to the pizza roundup, a friend drags me to Antonio’s, with the enticing lure of “it smells like ass if ass smelled like foot,” but she says it’s got the best NY-style pizzas on the island (assuming the ass-foot smell refers to the restaurant, not the pizza themselves). It’s true that Antonio’s doesn’t exactly greet you with the wafting smell of dough in an oven, but this doesn’t take away from the New York/big city pizza joint vibe. The atmosphere is complete with the arcade games in the corner, a gruff server in the front and red-and-white checkered paper under our pizza.

As for the pizza upskirt, it’s mighty fine. The sturdy crust is lightly charred on the bottom, taken to a darker color than most pizza places in Honolulu would dare. The tomato sauce is brightly acidic and the cheese salty and bubbling brown. The three basic components: cheese, sauce and crust are a far cry from my hoity-toity California pizza ideal, but I’m developing an affinity for this representative from the other coast. Antonio’s may not have New York’s famous tap water and coal-burning ovens, long rumoured to be what makes New York pizza good, but Antonio’s does fine without.

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