History Daily - Saturday Matinee: Eating History

Episode Date: September 5, 2026

On today’s Saturday Matinee, we treat ourselves to a slice of history behind arguably the world's favorite food: pizza. Link to Eating History: https://eatinghistorypodcast.com/ Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

I have a lot of ideas. Ideas for new episodes, ideas for new seasons, ideas for new shows, ideas for new projects, new tools, ideas everywhere. But ideas are cheap. That's why you can't patent just an idea. You have to actually work it and turn it into something tangible. You can't copyright an idea either. You can write it down and the expression of that idea is protected, but not the idea itself. Ideas are cheap. So even though I have a lot of ideas, they're all worthless until I act upon them. And here is one that I won't be acting on. Because I like to cook so much and love the rich history behind the food we eat, I've had the idea that I should start a new podcast about the history of food. Maybe I could get a real credentialed chef to co-host.

I could be the quote-unquote historical authority, and they can bring their practical in-the-kitchen experience. And then we both enjoy diving into the real history behind some of our favorite foods. But why won't I be pursuing this tasty idea for a new show? Because someone's already done it. On today's Saturday matinee, we're sharing an episode from Eating History. Michelin-starred chef and top chef runner-up Adrian Cheatham and her history buff husband, Stephen Bailey, co-host to take us through the people, business decisions,

cultural forces, and raging debates behind arguably the world's favorite food pizza. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow Eating History. put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you. Chicago, December, 1943, here's the scene. Outside, snow swirls down Ohio Street. Wind off Lake Michigan cuts to the city

like a knife. It's the kind of cold that makes your lungs ache, but in the basement at number 29, it's warm, almost too warm. Rick Ricardo stands near a cold oven, flour dusting his forearms. Doe stretched across his knuckles. He's an artist and a restaurateur. owns Ricardo's a popular restaurant on Rush Street

where Chicago's painters and writers gather. But right now in this basement, that smells like yeast and coal smoke. He's deep in an experiment. Ricardo moved his family into the apartment directly above the basement after returning from a solo trip to Italy. Ricardo grew up in northern Italy,

not Naples. Pizza wasn't his thing, but he knows food and business, and for months now, he's been experimenting, living upstairs so he can work at all hours. The pizza in his hands doesn't look like anything in New York or Chicago's Little Italy. It's taller. Actually, much taller. He presses dough into a deep pan, building the crust up the sides like a pie shell.

Then he layers it backwards, cheese on the bottom, chunks of cooked sausage, then thick tomato sauce on top. His business partner, Ike Sewell, a smooth-talking Texas liquor sales, thinks pizza should be more substantial, a meal, not a snack, something worth a higher price. But it's Ricardo down here night after night working through what will become a year of experimentation. He slides the heavy pan into the cold oven. 30 minutes, maybe longer. That's not pizza time.

That's casserole time. The cast iron radiates heat. Cheese melts from the bottom up. Sauce bubbles and reduces. The crust climbs the sides of the pan, golden and buttery. When it comes out, crusts two inches tall, cheese stretching and thick ropes sauce the color of brick. It doesn't look like anyone else's pizza. And that is exactly the point.

In New York, pizza means thin cross and a fold. But Chicago, Chicago's about to do something totally different. Something bigger. Something so different that people will argue for the next. next 80 years about whether it's even pizza at all. This is eating history, food that changed the world, a show about the dishes that spread, evolved, and reshape culture along the way. I'm Stephen Bailey, a history enthusiast who loves to eat. And I'm Chef Adrian Cheatham, a food enthusiast who loves to history. This season, we're telling the story of pizza,

and this is episode four. Pizza Goes Deep. Okay, well, we just heard about Rick Ricardo. Love Hate the name, by the way. But he's making something that definitely does not sound like the pizza that we've been talking about for the last three episodes. But before we get to Chicago and the whole deep dish situation, I think we need to pull up again because our listeners need to see what's happening more broadly. When did pizza stop being just one style of pizza with toppings that varied from region to region and start becoming New York style pizza or Chicago style pizza? That's the perfect question for the. this episode because by the 1940s and 50s, as we discussed in the last episode, pizza is starting to branch out from New York, and that means different regional identities are forming.

I mean, American cities aren't just making pizza anymore. They're kind of creating competing definitions of what pizza is. While there were a number of regional variations, this episode is going to focus on two cities that end up creating the most iconic competitors to what we know of as New York-style pizza. And I promise you that competition will be absolutely fierce. So let's quickly establish what makes New York pizza, New York pizza, because you already know about Lombardies and coal ovens from the last episode. But there's really three key things here. First, thin, pliable crust that you can fold and half lengthwise.

Second, it's sold by the slice, eaten standing up or walking. And that's important because the largely working class clientele doesn't have time or money during lunch. to buy a whole pizza. Third, it's cooked in coal ovens, 700 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit, which creates that specific char and chew. By the 40s and 50s, this is just what pizza means in New York. Dozens of pizzerias, all solving the same problems the same way. And from a food science perspective, the coal oven temperature is crucial. You need dough with high protein flour to withstand that heat without burning. And you need it thin enough. to cook in two to three minutes.

The crust has to stay pliable because it's cooked so fast, but the inside won't have time to dry out, even though the outside gets charred. And by the late 1940s, New York World War II vets are coming home, moving to the suburbs, and they want pizza that they remember from before they left. I mean, that train is never late, and World War II had to come in again.

Choo-choo on time. So it's not my fault that what we're to explain so much. And I'm only bringing it up because New York style spreads beyond Manhattan. It becomes an identity. But here's where it gets interesting. Chicago looks at what New York is doing and says, we're going to do something completely different. That is pretty much how we roll in Chicago. That is true. I can confirm. So we have to start this story with two crazy characters. I mean, there's crazy people throughout pizza's history, but these two really take the pie. And I predict our listeners are really going to love these guys.

So we've been talking about Rick Ricardo, but who was this guy really? And what is the story with his Texan partner, Ike Sewell? Okay, so these two are absolutely fantastic. Let me start with Rick. His real name is Richard Novoretti. And he was born in Italy and came to America as a ship's mate. But he wasn't just a sailor. He was really a renaissance man, a painter, a dancer, musician.

So Rick Ricardo does some craziness. He shows up in New Orleans and their shipsmate. He promptly jumps ship in New Orleans to my woman named me, me. I mean, I'm from New Orleans. I can understand how that could happen. And after they get married, they move to Georgia to do what any newlyweds would do. Work as dancers. I feel like we missed that chapter in our marriage, but, you know, that is still just the tip of the Rick Ricardo iceberg story, I feel.

I feel like there's more to it. You'd be corrected as the tip of the iceberg. This man is just getting started. I mean, actually, they eventually. make their way to Chicago, where Rick tries his hand at several things, selling paintings, working in magazine publishing, running a speakeasy during prohibition. Of course, Chicago at the time, makes sense. But he finally settles on opening Ricardo's restaurant on Rush Street in 1934. And of course, he paints three massive female nudes and mounts two of them on the ceiling surrounded by light bulbs.

Of course he did. I mean, given everything that you've told me about this guy, it kind of tracks. but I love that he was bringing all of his passions together under one roof. He was indeed. He's like, let's just get it all in one place. And I got to kind of respect it. So we haven't seen really this much audacity since our friend, a piece just from episode one, I would say. I mean, the place became famous as this bohemian hangout for artists and writers.

Rick let his artist friends hang their work on the walls for sale. He commissioned seven huge murals called the seven lively arts to go above the bar, which she then designed in the shape of an artist palette. So the place was dubbed the Mo Mart of the Midwest. I mean, this was not a guy who did anything conventionally. This is the same guy, though, who's eventually going to invent deep dish pizza, the artist with the nude paintings on his ceiling. I mean, I guess greatness comes in many forms, even nudes.

And in all seriousness, it kind of makes some sense when you think about it because he's someone who sees food as art. He's willing to experiment and he doesn't care about it. rules, as we saw, but his partner, Ike Sewell, is a completely different character. Ike is from Will's Point, Texas, a tiny town in East Texas. He played football at the University of Texas and made the All-American team as a guard. He's a big physical guy, and after college, he worked for American Airlines, then became a liquor salesman. So we've got the flamboyant Italian artist and the Texas football player liquor salesman. Now we need to know how did these

two characters actually meet. Well, in true restaurant industry fashion, it brings people together and Ike was selling liquor to restaurants. His route included Ricardo's. So they became friends. And here's where the story gets even crazier. It gets crazy? Even crazier. According to Ike, he originally pitched Rick on opening a Mexican restaurant. Ike really missed the Mexican food from Texas he grew up with and thought there would be a market for it in Chicago. So they leased this basement space at 29 East Ohio. And Ricardo, starts painting bullfighting murals on the wall. Now, Rick is an Italian and had never actually eaten Mexican food, so Ike's bartender decided to make him some. But Rick gets violently ill.

I mean, completely sick. He later says that it was the worst meal and experience he ever had in his entire life. He was so upset that he emptied out the cash register, took off to Italy for two or three months, and nobody could find him. So I'm sure you're probably wondering, Doesn't this guy have like a family and a restaurant? Does he just like vanish and leave them behind? The answer would be yes. He just bolts and it takes all the money. Meanwhile, Ike's sitting there with this vacant Mexican restaurant with bullfight paintings on the walls.

And he's kind of wondering what to do next. So tell us how we go from empty Mexican restaurant to the fathers of deep dish pizza. Well, okay. So Rick eventually returns. He wanders back from Italy. He's broke. He's disillusioned. He says, you know what, forget Mexican food. We're doing pizza.

Of course he does. I mean, what else would you do? And this is the point where we started the episode, right? Full circle again. Ike agrees to do the pizza concept if Rick can come up with something that is different from New York style or Neapolitan. It needs to be substantial, substantial enough to warrant a sit-down meal, but still be recognizable as pizza. So that's when Rick goes into the Mexican restaurant basement lab and came up with what would become known as Deep Dish Pizza.

So if you're coming to the conclusion, as I know you are, that Deep Dish Pizza only exists because Mexican food made Rick Ricardo sick, you are correct. As always, there's a little nuance in this story. I mean, even though we talk about Rick as the creator of Deep Dish, there's probably a little more collaboration than the story implies. There was a cook named Alice May Redman who probably contributed. There was also a Sassoon employee named Akani Picanado who helped refine the recipe. But yeah, I mean, the Mexican food disaster is at the center of the story of deep dish.

Okay, so I get it that they're making this deep dish pizza and everything is sort of reversed, which I love, you know. In New York, you've got thin dough, then sauce, then cheese, cooked in two minutes. Chicago deep dish, thick dough in a deep pan, like an inch or more, pressed up the sides. then cheese goes directly on the dough, then toppings of your choice, then a thick layer of sauce on top, and it bakes for 30 to 45 minutes, which is why you need more sauce. But baking it for that long completely changes the texture that we're familiar with. With that much time in the oven and cheese being insulated by the sauce, you're not getting a crispy cheese. You're getting this molten, gooey layer in the center that basically steams up and melts under the sauce.

And the crust becomes more like biscuit dough. It's buttery. It's almost flaky on the outside and soft in the centers of it. It's structurally more like a pie or a keesh than pizza. I mean, you definitely can't fold it. I mean, you can't eat it walking. You need a plate, a fork, a knife. You need to sit down, which is exactly what Ike wanted.

I mean, he wanted to charge more, and you can't charge more for street food. You kind of charge more for a meal. So this is a business decision as much as it is a food innovation. And it really took a while to catch on. They opened in 1943, and at first, it flopped. I mean, people would come in and say, we've seen peace in Italy, and this isn't it. So I probably would have been one of those people. But Ike started cutting pieces and giving them away for free at the bar.

They had to refinance the place three times in the first year. They were this close to almost being closed. I mean, a lot of restaurants close within the first year. It's a sad reality. But eventually, their plan worked. And by the late 1940s, Pizzeria Uno, had standing room only. Ike opened a second location in 55, called it, of course, Pizzeria Duay. And then when Rick died in 54, Ike became the sole owner and built it into an empire.

He kept his day job, though, at the liquor company as a VP for 22 years while still running the pizzeria. But here's another really interesting thing. For decades, Ike refused every franchise offer. People wanted to open Uno's all over the country, but he just kept saying no. He wanted to keep it local and keep it special. It wasn't until 1978 that he finally agreed to let someone open a test location in Boston, cold weather, heavy pizza makes sense. But it was such a success there that by 1980, he started franchising. And that's when Deep Dish really went national and grew outside of Chicago.

Today there's over 100 locations around the world, and the chain is now called Uno Pizzeria in Grill. But you can find them everywhere. from Boston to Dubai. So what started in one basement in Chicago became a global empire, all because Mexican food made Rick Ricardo sick. So here's what's interesting.

The way that Uno approaches it with Ike is not just about the invention, it's also about how quickly it grows. And so that's a theme we're going to see. Invention, and then what's the business model you actually put around the invention to talk about what happens to that particular restaurant over time?

There are going to be many different versions of it. So New York has its thing, Chicago has its thing, but there's at least one more city we need to talk about, and that city is Detroit. And I know all the Detroit is out there, like, you better talk about Detroit. So we've even got a little Detroit pizza here as a foreshadow it. Detroit story is different because it's not about artists or football players.

It's about an immigrant trying to make his struggling bar work. And this guy is Gus Ware. I mean, he's born in San Marino, which is that tiny country inside of Italy. And he came to Detroit in 19, 29 at age 21 with only $70 in his pocket. Wow. And in our research, we found that this poor guy came to the U.S. seven months before the Great Depression hit. So he's got a wicked sense of timing.

He worked as eventually a tile center. He was able to find a job, hustler. Then he's a laborer at Ford's plan. He gets married to a woman named Anna, whose family comes from Sicily. And in the 1940s, he and Anna's family saved up enough money to buy a little bar called Buddy's Ronde. I mean, it had a botchy bar court and a loyal set of customers, but what it didn't have was a profitable business. I mean, it was making no money. So much like Ike and Rick's bar, their bar wasn't making money, and let me guess, pizza saves the day.

Eventually, you would be correct, but there was a little more to the story first. So Anna's mother, a Sicilian immigrant named Syria, had a recipe for a thick Sicilian pizza. So Gus and Anna start experimenting. But here's the problem. Gus doesn't have the right pants. and he needs something that is kind of deep and rectangular. Ah, so this is where Detroit's auto industry finally comes in, right? That's right.

The auto industry comes to the rescue. Gus takes some pans from work. These are blue steel pans that would use as drip trays or to hold spare parts in auto factories. They're industrial pans. They were never meant for cooking, but they're thick steel, almost like cast iron. And they're the perfect size and shape. And those pans completely change how the pizza cooks. That blue steel retains heat at an insane level.

And it develops a seasoning over time, just like you said, much like cast iron does. But when you press dough into that pan and put cheese all the way to all four sides, the cheese that touches the steel caramelizes. It gets crispy, lacy, almost burnt, but in the best possible way. And people in Detroit call those edges Freako. They have a name. I want to know how they came up with Frego. And those edges became the signature.

Sorry, I don't have that for you today. But people fight over corner pieces because they have the most free go. And the square shape means that you can cut it so that everybody gets edges. And Gus is using Wisconsin brick cheese instead of mozzarella. It's got a higher fat content, which makes it even better for caramelizing and getting that beautiful crust. Plus, they put the sauce on in stripes after it comes out of the oven so it stays fresh and bright instead of cooking down. Every single choice is about maximizing what that industrial pan can do. So I'm going to become a Detroiter and say my favorite part of this poster is the freako around it.

So it works. Detroit starts driving across town to get this pizza. Gus sold buddies in 1953 and opened another place called Cloverleaf still making the same pizza. It's so popular that other buddies employees branch out and start their own places. I mean, it stays local for decades as a Detroit. Detroit secret. And that's the interesting part. Unlike Rick and Ike's Pizzeria Uno, Gus's Detroit pizza doesn't become the basis for a large global pizza empire. It stays local and spreads to a number of restaurants, most of which are not owned by Gus and his family.

So once again, business choices affect how the invention spreads and who spreads it. So by this time in the late 1940s, we have three completely different pizzas with three completely different origin stories. New York, thin, foldable, sold by the slice. Chicago, thick, fork and knife. Casserol-like, do you want to say that? Detroit is square with crispy edges and industrial pans. But if you're thinking that people are going to start arguing about those versions and which is correct,

yeah, you would be absolutely right. Did I just hear you say casserole and deep dish in the same sentence? I said casserole-like. I mean, this is, I'm learning so much making this show. I have to say. We got the margarita. We got the casserole comments. You're not going to be able to back to Chicago. I digress. Once you have distinct regional styles, you have something to defend. I mean, something to take pride in when someone from another city says, that's not real pizza, I mean, it kind of becomes personal. It's not just about food anymore. It's identity, place,

even who you are. So I guess this is the point where I should disclose something that you already know well, but our listeners do not. I think deep dish is delicious when you were talking about it. I was like, That's delicious, but it's just not pizza. Okay, why you have to bring that up? I am aware of your unfortunate stance on this, and I'm not going to dignify that and take the bait. So I'm just going to move on. And although it's disappointing, I must say I love you in spite of your backwards views on my pizza. There's actually a famous story about John Stewart going on a rant on the daily show calling deep dish, quote, a pizza casserole.

also you're not alone, even though you're both wrong. But he also said it's an above-ground marinerous swimming pool for rats. And Chicago politicians actually responded. They took the bait. But they defended their pizza on the floor of the city council, and I'm so glad they did. But this is all a very American thing, right? You know, in America, we love to compete and argue, especially when it comes to our regional specialties.

I want to say the swimming pool for rats was a bit too far. I do not agree with that. I cast for yes, but I can't take it that part. Not only do we like to argue, we like to market. And by the 1950s, someone's going to figure out how to take these regional pizzas and scale them up. I'm talking about making them consistent, franchisable, available everywhere, turning pizza really into a product instead of a place-based food. Because they're not interested in tradition or authenticity or regional pride, they're interested in consistency, scalability, and profit. They're going to turn pizza into a product you can buy in Kansas or Montana or anywhere else.

Same dough, same sauce, same pizza, every single time. And regional pizza purists are going to hate this, even more than they hate the different versions of pizza that they're all arguing against all the time. But millions of Americans are going to love it. And that tension between people who want pizza to stay regional and special and people who just want pizza to be accessible, that's going to define the next 50 years of pizza history.

Next time, pizza goes national. The franchise wars begin, and two different versions of America go to war over what pizza is even supposed to be.