The deep dish palaces of Chicago must shudder just thinking about it, but it has become common knowledge in the world where politics and food intersect that The Commander in Chief’s favorite pizza – and he likes pizza a lot – comes from St. Louis. Starting this week, it will come from Washington, DC as well.
Legend (which I have on pretty good authority is also truth) has it that when he was running for President, during a campaign stop in Missouri, he sent a staffer who was from St. Louis out to bring back pizza. The staffer chose his own favorite, Pi, and the rest is now pizza history. President Obama declared it the best he ever had, and after winning the election, even invited the owners of Pi to come cook their pizza for him in the White House kitchen, which they did.
Now Pi, which gets its pun name from the roundish mathematical symbol (and 314, as in 3.14, is the St. Louis area code), has come full circle, or at least to inside the Beltway, as this week is the scheduled soft opening of its DC location, District of Pi (9th and F Street in Penn Quarter). In keeping with recent restaurant and social media trends, the owners have been prepping for this moment for months by operating a Pi truck in the Nation’s Capital, so many Capitol Hill hipsters already know it, but the trucks serve just one half of Pi’s unique pizza menu. The brick and mortar version will have it all.
I had occasion to recently eat at Pi in St. Louis, which now boasts three additional locations and a roving pizza truck, plus the original one, which is in the Loop. In a world gone mad for gourmet pizza and faux-Neapolitan flair, two things set Pi apart. The first is its upscale collegiate, pubby feel, with lots and lots of microbrews on tap, with more a cool après ski vibe than a brick oven pizza feel, which should go over big in student mad DC. Second is that the pizza theme is schizophrenic – Pi specializes in both wood-fired thin crust and deep dish pizza, something very few places do.
It’s worth noting at this juncture that Pi is adamantly not St. Louis-style pizza, and for those who are not from St. Louis, the city has its own truly unique regional style of ultra-thin, almost cracker-like crust covered in processed Provel cheese and cut into squares, more of a cheese and crackers football watching hors d’oeuvres than slice of pizza. St. Louis-style pizza (there they just call it pizza) is far from gourmet, yet strangely addictive and appealing, and in its home city, Pi is considered a radical departure.
Â
They use only fresh ingredients, make the meatballs from scratch, have the sausage locally made by an artisanal salumeria, do all the right things. The thin crust wood fired pizza with lots of interesting topping choices is very good, but if thin crust is what he’s after, I could take the President to a few places that might become his new favorite. Where Pi breaks ground is its reinterpretation of deep dish, with a lot of cornmeal added to the crust, less buttery than the Chicago version, and much more coherent, so that you can pick up a slice and eat it fairly neatly with your hands, rather than the fork and knife casserole version of the Windy City. I’m not saying its better, probably because when I crave deep dish, which I sometimes do, I think of Chicago and in particular Lou Malnati’s, but it is an innovation, and it’s the best pizza at Pi.
And don’t forget this: their deep dish apple pie is a dessert innovation that should not be missed!
The owners downplay the Presidential connection, and play up the fact that DC fits their demographic perfectly, matches up with their St. Louis clientele, and in any case, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue could not possibly order enough pizzas to make the new venture a success. The truth is that the reason the pizza first came to Obama’s attention is that it was already beloved in St. Louis, but regardless, there’s little doubt that the high profile attention will pack the place, at least in the beginning.
And it can hardly be a coincidence that Delmar, the street the original Pi is on in St. Louis, was renamed Barack Obama Boulevard.