New York and Chicago cops spark epic feud about each other’s pizza

No matter how hard you might try, some rivalries are way too bitter to be resolved. Whether it’s Manchester United vs Liverpool, Coke vs Pepsi or restaurants vs my wallet, some struggles are too titanic, too significant to ever finish with a pat on the back and a conciliatory kiss and make up. Some fires are destined to go on raging.

Credit: Pixabay/Daria-Yakovleva

In the world of food, few feuds are as passionate as the debate between two of America’s biggest cities. New York and Chicago both have a proud Italian heritage and can each claim to have invented some of the nation’s most iconic dishes. However, there is no danger of these two communities ever agreeing to live and let live – a situation down almost entirely to how they have decided to cook pizza.

In both cities, pizza is a birthright. However, if you asked a Chicagoan and a New Yorker to draw you a pie, the pictures would most likely look completely different. New York favours a flatter, thinner design, with cheese on top of tomato sauce, coating a crispy base. Chicago, on the other hand, specialises in “deep dish” – a doughy bowl where mozarella sits underneath the sauce. As tasty as both varieties are, they continue to be the beating heart of edible controversy.

It should therefore surprise no one to learn that this debate between two schools of pizza thought has now spread to every area of society, including law enforcement. To mark this weekend’s “national pizza day”, officers from Chicago Police Department posted a video of themselves “bravely” trying some New York-style pizza, before declaring it “not bad”, but still inferior to deep-dish. This was obviously not going to go unnoticed.

Almost immediately, New York officers responded with a video of their own declaring Chicago-style to be “a little soft, like (your) baseball team”, before refusing to return for a second bite at the pie. The disdain for rival pizza was immediately obvious. The response was as ice cold as the north Atlantic weather.

Predictably, it did not take long for the rest of the internet to weigh in with their two cents. Responses varied from question marks over the sincerity of the New York response, to criticism of the very concept of deep dish. One commentator even went so far as to label the Illinois favourite “a casserole”. As with anything on the internet, what might have started out as some light-hearted ribbing soon descended into a bloodbath.  

Clearly, the ferociously cold temperatures across America have done little to cool emotions on either side of this debate. There doesn’t seem to be any danger of either side admitting defeat, no matter how many shady videos get thrown in their direction. At least the rest of us get to enjoy the spectacle of two police departments going head to head over something as serious as cooking pizza.