The Best Pizza in Detroit
Detroit invented a style. These are the places still doing it right, plus the ones doing something else entirely.
Detroit-style pizza is on menus in Brooklyn, Austin, Los Angeles, and a dozen other cities that learned about blue steel pans from Instagram. The style went national. Then it went international. And the city where it started is still the best place to eat it.
But Detroit's pizza story is not just one style. The city that invented the rectangle also has one of the best thin-crust pizzerias in the Midwest, wood-fired ovens in Midtown, and neighborhood spots that have been making pies for decades without anyone writing trend pieces about them. This guide covers the places I've eaten at and keep going back to.1This is not a comprehensive list of every pizza restaurant in metro Detroit. It is a focused guide to the places I know well enough to recommend with confidence. If your favorite spot is missing, it may mean I haven't been yet.
The Style That Started Here
You cannot write about pizza in Detroit without starting with the pan.
Detroit-style pizza is baked in a blue steel pan, the kind reportedly adapted from trays used in automotive parts factories. The dough is high-hydration, pressed into the oiled pan and proofed until it fills every corner. Wisconsin brick cheese gets pushed all the way to the edges, where it melts down the sides and fries against the hot metal. The result is the frico edge: crispy, lacey, salty, slightly bitter from caramelization. Tomato sauce goes on top in stripes after the pizza comes out of the oven. The layers stay distinct. You taste crust, cheese, and sauce separately in every bite.
That is the template. Here is where to eat it.
Buddy's Pizza
17125 Conant St, Detroit (original location; multiple metro Detroit locations)
Buddy's is widely credited as the originator of Detroit-style pizza, with the original Conant Street location reportedly serving rectangular pies since the mid-1940s. Whether every detail of the founding story holds up, the pizza is not in dispute.
I ordered the Detroiter (pepperoni with racing stripes of tomato sauce) at the Conant location on a Wednesday evening. The pan came to the table still sizzling. The corner pieces are the whole argument: two frico edges instead of one, the cheese crust crunching, the dough inside pillowy and warm, the pepperoni curled into small cups holding rendered fat and spice. The center pieces are softer, more bread-forward, but the bottom crust stays firm all the way through. That structural integrity over the full rectangle is what separates Buddy's from the imitators.
The Veggie (green peppers, onions, mushrooms, black olives, tomatoes) makes a different case for the style. The thick dough absorbs the moisture from the vegetables instead of going soggy. The mushrooms brown on top, the onions caramelize into the cheese layer. If the style holds up without pepperoni, the style is doing real work. It does.
Buddy's has multiple locations across metro Detroit. The Conant Street original has the history. Any location will give you the pizza.2We covered Buddy's in depth as the fourth entry in The Slice, our ongoing pizza series. That piece goes deeper on the pan, the dough, and the frico edge.
Order this: The Detroiter pepperoni. Corner pieces mandatory.
Supino Pizzeria
2457 Russell St, Eastern Market, Detroit
Supino is not Detroit-style. Dave Mancini has been making New York-style thin-crust pizza at 2457 Russell Street since 2008, and his presence on this list is the reason the guide is called "Best Pizza in Detroit" and not "Best Detroit-Style Pizza."
The crust folds cleanly along the center. The char is even. The dough has been stretched by the same hands (or hands trained by those hands) thousands of times, and you can taste the consistency. This is pizza as repetition refined into something approaching craft.
The margherita is the benchmark. San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil. The sauce is bright and acidic enough to balance the richness of the cheese. No extra cheese piled on to mask the technique. One slice tells you everything about the kitchen.
The white pizza with arugula and lemon is the one I order most. No red sauce. Olive oil and garlic on the crust, mozzarella, then after the oven a full handful of fresh arugula and a generous squeeze of lemon. Most white pizzas go timid with the greens. Supino commits. The arugula is a real portion, enough that the lemon has something to cling to and the bitterness registers as a flavor, not a garnish.
On Saturdays, when Eastern Market is running, the line at Supino stretches toward the market sheds. People plan their market mornings around getting a pie here. On a quiet Tuesday, you walk right in. Either way, the pizza comes out the same.
A whole pizza runs somewhere between $14 and $20 depending on size and toppings. For the quality, Supino is among the best values in the city.
Order this: The white pizza with arugula and lemon. Then the margherita, because you should.
Beyond What We Track
Buddy's and Supino are the two Detroit pizza restaurants this publication covers in depth, with full profiles and series entries. But Detroit's pizza landscape extends well beyond two names. A few places that belong in the conversation, with the caveat that I am writing about them with less depth because I have less experience with them:
Loui's Pizza
Loui's, in Hazel Park, is one of the names that comes up whenever Detroit pizza regulars argue about who does it best. The style is Detroit-style in the same pan tradition as Buddy's, reportedly with a thinner crust and a different cheese blend. Loui's partisans are loyal in the way that only pizza partisans can be. I have eaten there once and found the frico edge excellent, the interior crumb slightly denser than Buddy's. It is on my list for a longer visit.3Loui's Pizza is at 23141 Dequindre Rd, Hazel Park. Technically outside Detroit proper, but close enough that excluding it from a Detroit pizza guide would be dishonest.
Shields Pizza
Shields is another name in the Detroit-style lineage. As the story goes, the restaurant has roots in the same mid-century Detroit pizza tradition as Buddy's, with locations in the metro area. The pies are square, the cheese goes to the edge, the sauce goes on top. Shields occupies a similar space in the Detroit pizza argument as the place your dad's friend insists is "the real original." I have not been recently enough to write about it with confidence.
The Broader Landscape
Michigan and Main, a pizza spot in the Avenue of Fashion neighborhood on Livernois, has been getting attention. Jolly Pumpkin's Midtown location at 441 W Canfield runs a wood-fired pizza program alongside its sour beer. Via 313, the Austin-based chain that built its reputation on Detroit-style pizza, has reportedly been expanding. The style that started here is being reinterpreted everywhere, including back home.
None of this diminishes Buddy's or Supino. If anything, the proliferation of Detroit-style pizza across the country makes the originals more interesting, not less. The copies work from the template. The source works from the ingredients.
Two Styles, One City
The useful thing about Detroit's pizza scene is that the city's two best-known pizzerias are doing completely different things.
Buddy's makes the case for the pan. Thick crust, frico edges, sauce on top, every bite a stack of distinct layers. The pizza is a construction. The pan does as much work as the baker.
Supino makes the case for the hand. Thin crust, clean fold, ingredients that you can taste individually because there is nowhere for them to hide. The pizza is a surface. The dough does all the work.
Both are correct. Both have been at it long enough that the correctness is backed by years of doing the same thing until it became instinct.
If someone visiting Detroit asks me where to eat pizza, I tell them both. Buddy's first, because the style was invented here and you should taste the original before you taste the interpretations. Supino second, because after a thick, rich rectangle of cheese-edged dough, a thin slice with arugula and lemon at Eastern Market is the best possible correction.
The drive from Ann Arbor is about 45 minutes on I-94. Both restaurants are worth it. Buddy's Conant Street location and Supino's Eastern Market location are about 15 minutes apart. You could do both in one trip if your appetite allows it. Mine usually does.
See also: The Slice: Detroit-Style Pizza for our in-depth Buddy's review, Supino Pizzeria profile, and our broader Where to Eat in Detroit guide.