For longer than I care to remember Little Caesars (whose headquarters are located in Detroit) was the default cheap pizza of choice among certain unseasoned members of my household. Whenever their chums arrived with little to no notice, this inexpensive affront to Sicilian pizza was a reliable source of feed that could keep the monsters appeased. Then, a little less than two years ago, an outpost of Jet’s Pizza—the other Detroit-based pizza chain—opened in the neighborhood and accord was reached. I love the buttery, cheesy, garlicky, caramelized crunch of an eight-corner turbo crust, and though it’s far superior, it is suggestive enough of Little Caesars that there’s peace in the house.
Then it gets weird. Usually, but not always, the sauce goes over the cheese on Detroit-style pizzas, as is the case at Buddy’s. (Jet’s doesn’t do this.) That’s not as strange as what they do at Paulie’s: apply a bright, acidic, chunky, and cold tomato sauce on top of the hot pizza. Tung says that when they were testing dozens of pies they got lazy and would lay down cold sauce out of expediency, and eventually the crew learned to like the contrast in temperatures. Further, he says a customer recently told him cold sauce allows for immediate scarfing without burning the roof of one’s mouth. As for me, I’m not so sure. A tablemate said that the cold sauce on the hot pizza really makes the flavor “pop,” but having eaten it without warning I thought it was disturbing. Cold pizza is one thing, but these wildly different surface temperatures seem like a violation of natural law.
Yet on the pie I ordered I was put off by an insipid, bland sauce obliterated by fennel sausage coins and sweet caramelized onions. RPC doesn’t have the wide range of wacky custom pizzas that Paulie Gee’s does, but there are some oddballs (huevos rancheros, brussels sprout, and bacon).
