Minnesota is home to some pretty cool things -- Mall of America, Scotch Tape, Post-It Notes, Target, Caribou Coffee, the Mayo Clinic, Red Wing Boots, Lucky Charms, Vikings, North Shore, hockey, hot dish, ice fishing, Spoonbridge and Cherry, Fulton, Surly. Hear any one of those words, and anybody who knows anything will know those are all aptly synonymous with Minnesota.

Pizza, however, in any style is not typically a word synonymous with Minnesota.

Yet, a restaurant in the Twin Cities -- Red's Savoy Pizza -- is claiming to be the home of "'Sota Style Pizza Since 1965." Minnesota-style pizza, according to their website, means thin crust, square cut, "passive-aggressive sauce," loads of toppings and mountains of cheese. In an interview with the Star Tribune, president of Red's Savoy Pizza Reed Daniels said,

If your slice is shaped like a triangle, it’s not Minnesota-style pizza. If you take a bite and nothing falls onto your plate, it’s not Minnesota-style pizza.”

An applaud-able effort at making it on the pizza map, but no. Here's why:

For one, Reed's definition of "Sota Style Pizza" is a pretty broad and still un-defined umbrella. If you said Chicago-style pizza, images of a deliciously deep-dish, thick crust, saucy pizza come to mind.

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If you said New York-style pizza, I would think of hand-tossed, thin crust pizza topped simply with sauce and mozzarella cheese and cut in slices the size of my head.

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You could even say brick oven pizza, and I'd think of small, round thin crust pizza, slightly burnt around the edges, cut in small squares and still smelling enticingly of smoke from the oven it just came out of.

But I've never heard of Minnesota-style pizza, and no images come to mind for a style that's supposedly been around for nearly 55 years.

Second, the 'Sota style of pizza -- if indeed a style -- I don't think is native to Minnesota. I've eaten pizzas just like that in my adventures around the Midwest. I could take you to small mom-and-pop Italian restaurants in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan that serve pizzas just like the one Red Savoy is claiming as its own.

All that to say, pizza fans the world wide web over are disputing the claim of Minnesota's own style of pizza...and with good reason. It's almost like claiming that "duck duck gray duck" is a thing -- unfortunately, Minnesotans are the only ones who believe it. 😅

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