(Nathan Myhrvold Photo / The Cooking Lab)
If you think New York is a blast as the best pizza town in the United States, then fuggedaboutit!
According to Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, co-authors of the upcoming Modernist Pizza, Portland, Oregon makes the best pizzas. Bloomberg reported this week that the authors came to this conclusion after eating nearly 400 coast-to-coast cakes.
“We had a hunch it was going to be good,” Myhrvold told Bloomberg, “but we were shocked at how good it was.”
The former chief technology officer at Microsoft, who later founded Intellectual Ventures, is no stranger to literary shaking up culinary topics, having previously published the epic cookbooks “Modernist Cuisine” and “Modernist Bread” at his home in Bellevue, Wash. Base .
Nathan Myhrvold, left, and Francisco Migoya. (The cooking laboratory photo)
“Modernist Pizza” continues the tradition as a three-volume, 1,700-page “definitive guide to one of the world’s most popular foods”, based on years of travel and research.
The authors visited 250 pizzerias around the world and more than a dozen cities in the United States in search of great pizza. According to Bloomberg, in addition to Portland, they went to Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, St. Louis, Old Forge, Pennsylvania, New Haven, Conn., Jersey City, NJ, several New York City boroughs, Chicago, Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois and Phoenix.
BEFORE: Do you fancy art? Nathan Myhrvold’s new Modernist Cuisine Gallery is a photographic festival
The best pizza in Portland – and one of the two best pizzerias in the US – is Lovely’s Fifty Fifty, according to the authors. A wide variety of “ultra-seasonal, ultra-local” toppings like nectarines, melted leeks, homemade sausages and more.
Owner Sarah Minnick said in an Instagram post that she was incredibly proud of the Portland pizza “today and every day” and grateful for the recognition.
“Modernist Pizza” examines food from all angles, according to a press release, from its origins in Italy to the development of local pizza styles to equipment, techniques, ingredients and more. 1,000 new recipes have been developed for the book and have been tested to ensure they can be made by pizza makers of all skill levels.
Myhrvold, physicist, mathematician, inventor and photographer, of course, also offers scientific knowledge, for example why hot peppers curls.
Modernist Pizza is due out October 5th, but can be pre-ordered from a variety of retailers.