Pizza (WNY Style)
A medium-thick, chewy crust with a slightly sweet sauce, lots of cheese, and small pepperoni that curl into crispy little cups as they cook.
🏆 Where to get the best pizza (wny style)
- 1 La Hacienda Ristorante & Pizzeria A family-run Italian restaurant and pizzeria on Pine Avenue since 1949. It's the local favorite for pizza, with amazing Italian food and a bar. Cash only.
- 2 Mr. Ventry's Pizza on the Boulevard A local, family Italian restaurant on Niagara Falls Blvd, known for fresh specialty pizzas, calzones, homemade pastas and soups, subs and jumbo wings.
- 3 Mister M's House of Food & Drink One of the best restaurants in Niagara Falls. A Hyde Park Blvd favorite for pizza, wings, subs, fish fry, big burgers and famous chicken parm dinners, plus the #1 beef on weck around.
Also serving it
📜 A little history
Buffalo is serious pizza country, with hundreds of pizzerias across the region. Local historian Steve Cichon starts the story in 1927, when Fioravante Santora began serving pizza; he calls Santora's the city's first pizzeria. The Bocce Club followed in 1946 and La Nova in 1957. No single person invented Buffalo-style pizza. It developed in neighborhood shops like these.
What makes it Buffalo? A thicker crust that is soft but holds up without folding, a slightly sweet sauce, cheese spread almost to the edge, and small pepperoni slices that curl into cups as they bake. The rims char and the cups hold little pools of oil, which is why locals call it "cup and char." A 1959 ad for Buffalo's Bison brand was already advertising "cup and curl" pepperoni.
Did you know? Food writer Arthur Bovino has argued that Buffalo may be America's pizza capital, or at least its most underrated regional style.