Rochester, NYPizza

CITY Magazine's pizza write-up credits chef James Revels and Brian Van Etten, the chef and co-owner behind Playhouse and Swillburger, with a South Clinton Avenue counter built on Detroit-style squares. CITY describes an airy but crisp crust, Wisconsin brick cheese piled high and to the edges, and two thick stripes of red sauce laid over the top. The menu rotates and the pie names are jokes, so ask what El Meat Man or The Side Piece is this week and order a square.

Kody Derhak spent seven years as executive sous chef at Oak Hill Country Club before opening this Park Avenue room, and the Democrat and Chronicle reports he brought the fine dining habits with him. Doughs are made in house from high-extraction flour milled in Trumansburg plus some Italian 00, and the pies and the sauce tomatoes both go through a wood-fired oven. Order the Dead Red Pie, topped with thinly sliced kabanosy from Polska Chata instead of pepperoni.

A Rochester family business since 1989, as the Rochester Business Journal put it, built on what the paper calls an authentic Brooklyn crust: large, wide and thin, and often folded for easy eating. (585) Magazine sets the Monroe Avenue counter beside its downtown cousin Pizza Stop and counts twenty-five kinds of pie, some built thick in the Sicilian style, others baked crisp enough to eat one-handed. The wings get a nod too, so order a few with a plain slice.

CITY Magazine's guide to Rochester's pizzerias calls this Culver Road counter justly famed for the thick-crusted focaccia pizza it has been turning out since 1973. Dayna Papaleo wrote that there are no weirdo toppings here, just fresh traditional offerings that devotees of the Sicilian style swear by, and noted the kitchen also makes a thinner crust if focaccia is not what you came for. Order a focaccia square first and judge the crust on its own.

Rochester-hometown classic. A Pontillo's/Mark's-era institution carrying the Rochester sheet-pizza tradition.