As I said in a previous post, taste is subjective. Yesterday I took a trip to Indiana with a couple friends and had pizza for lunch. It was okay. It wasn't terrible, but it definitely wasn't amazing. It was the kind of thin crust pizza you find all over the midwest. Talking to someone after they were raving about how good the pizza there and I was a little surprised. Like I said, it wasn't terrible, but it didn't strike me as anything particularly remarkable as far as pizza goes.
Is their opinion of the pizza wrong? No. I used to get very opinionated about my tastes in food but over time I've decided that for whatever reason (geographic or biological) we all like what we like so I try to be a little more respectful of those differences.
I moved to Chicago in 2001. I knew when I moved here that Chicago was known for it's pizza. I love pizza and had a couple places I always enjoyed going to back in Boston (Pizzeria Regina in the North End) and Portland, Maine (Silly's on the East End/Munjoy Hill). I'd also spent time plenty of time in New York and had some excellent slices there.
Pizza in Chicago was disappointing. Deep dish to me is not so much pizza as it is a casserole and completely overrated. So my friends told me to try the thin crust. I'm not sure what the appeal is of eating pizza on a crust the consistency of the water cracker but I don't care for it. And cutting pizza into squares just seems wrong to me. Pizza is a pie and should be cut into pie slices, and flexible enough to fold in half. And there was always too much sauce and the cheese had a strange consistency. It wasn't horrible, just really mediocre and not much better than the average frozen pizza.
Luckily, since I moved here, more New York style and Neapolitan style pizza places have opened up. Piece (they actually describe their pizza as New Haven style) and Santullo's in Wicker Park are both excellent. Spacca Napoli in Ravenswood is the best of the Neapolitan style places I've been to in Chicago. They use quality ingredients and the crust has a nice char on the bottom and is a good mix of crispy and chewy.
My favorite of them all is Great Lake in Andersonville. Esquire called them the best pizza in the US and I think they deserved it. They use seasonal, local ingredients and have wonderful crust and they take great care in making each pizza to ensure high quality. Unfortunately there are about 12 seats in the whole restaurant (this doubles in the summer when they have outdoor seating) and one oven and they don't rush so you will very likely have to wait a while. Last I heard they have no intention of expanding. If you go to Yelp and look them up you will see reviews from a bunch of people who don't believe in waiting for pizza and think they should run their business more like Dominos (I respectfully disagree with these people). You will also see reviews from people like me who think they make an amazing pie and think it is well worth the wait. It's BYOB so I suggest grabbing an extra bottle of wine and bring someone you enjoy talking to (or sit at the big communal table and talk to the other customers. Sometimes they will trade slices of pizza with you if you ask nicely).
Most of the native midwesterners I have met disagree with me on pizza so a lot of the places I like I will not recommend to them simply because it's probably not their cup of tea. The pizza I like is not pizza people who think Lou Malnati's is the best thing ever will probably enjoy. Which is fine. To each his own.
I developed a preference for higher quality beer around the time I was legally old enough to drink. I have my brothers to thank for that. One of them worked for a brewery and once when he was home visiting, he turned me on to Guinness and I was smitten. I still drank the cheap stuff because I was young and short on cash and getting drunk once in a while was still a novelty. I drank Guinness when I could though and soon after that started discovering local craft brews. I prefer stouts and porters. I like dark, rich and malty beers and I've never been much of a hophead. I can appreciate good hoppy beers from time to time but they aren't my first choice. There are beers out there I like more than Guinness (Bell's Kalamazoo Stout for instance) but Guinness is a sentimental favorite and rarely disappoints.
My boyfriend is the exact opposite. He likes IPAs and ESBs and beers with names containing the word 'hop'. He tried a Guinness about a month ago because he hadn't tried one in a number of years and thought maybe he was missing something. After one sip he made a face and gave it to me to finish. We have both learned how to recommend beers to each other because usually if one of us doesn't like it the other probably will. And even if I don't agree with him, I can at least respect the fact that at least he doesn't like crappy beer.
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