What is pizza? Where is pizza?

To put it simply: pizza is a baked layering of bread, sauce and cheese.

To put it bluntly: that definition is useless.

Such a bland description diminishes just how delicious pizza can be and how ubiquitous it's become. It ignores the fact that pizza is a cultural icon we want to put on our T-shirts and tattoo on our bodies.

Pizza unites us and pizza divides us. It is a common denominator of American life and root of regional feuding. You can get it for $1 or $4,000.

In Denver, you can get pizza in several regional variations and in dozens of places. We've got tastes of New York, New Haven, Detroit and Chicago all within city limits, plus one spot that puts beer in its dough and plenty of restaurants that serve Neapolitan pizza. Below, our guide to the different types of pizza and where to find them.

The best pizza in Denver as well as most of the rest of the pizza in Denver

* Offers delivery
^ Serves alcohol
# Open after midnight

New Haven (aka apizza)

Black Sky Brewery ^#
490 Santa Fe Drive

"It's a cold-rise pizza, so we keep all the flour in a cooler and we mix everything cold, including the yeast, and then we put it back in the cooler for a 24-hour rise. The really slow rise gives it more of an airy dough -- more of a chewy dough," said Harry Smith, who is from the New Haven-area and co-owns Black Sky with his wife, Lila Mackey. "New Haven also has a signature clam pizza -- clams and white sauce with bacon and garlic."

The story, he says, is that the man who owned the original New Haven pizzeria was allergic to red sauce, and that there was a man selling clams in the alley behind the pizzeria.

You can get the signature pie at Black Sky, where they get all their clams from New Bedford, Mass. And don't worry, if shellfish make your face look like a blowfish, there are clam-free pies to try.

White Pie*^
1702 Humboldt St.

Basil Doc's*
2107 E. Virginia Ave.
330 Holly St.
1481 S. Holly St.

Detroit

Blue Pan Pizza *^
3930 W. 32nd Ave.
3509 E. 12th Ave.

Giles Flanagin, owner of Blue Pan Pizza, says his restaurant makes the only authentic Detroit-style pizza in Denver. And what makes it real Detroit pizza also keeps it true to the Motor City name.

"The main thing that makes Detroit-style pizza unique was the pan that [the creator] originally used. It was an automotive parts pan made out of blue steel," Flanagin said. "He was an immigrant from Sicily and wanted to make a Sicilian pizza. The pan was very critical to getting the crust to caramelize the way that it does."

That caramelized crust is also what makes Detroit pizza unique, along with the use of Wisconsin brick cheese and a thick but light and airy dough, which Blue Pan achieves through a long, triple-rise process.

"It took my partner years to figure out how to do it," Flanagin said. "The families that own the two original [pizzerias] -- their doughs are still secret."

Last but not least: veggies go under the cheese and sauce goes on top.

Blue Pan will open a second restaurant at 12th Avenue and Madison Street. Flanagin said the lease was signed in late May and he expects to open early next year.

Chicago deep-dish

Patxi's *^

1598 E. 17th Ave.
185 Steele St.

"Our deep-dish pizza is what's referred to as a stuffed-crust pizza," said Rich Burns, area director for Patxi's. "There's a pan pizza, which is just baked inside the pan, and our stuffed deep-dish is a thin layer of dough inside a 2-inch cake pan, then your add your ingredients, then a paper-thin layer of dough, then we pinch it down and put the extra ingredients on top and bake it."

"There are the big names out in Chicago," he added, "Ours is comparable to Giordano's."

Wyman's No. 5 *^#
2033 E. 13th Ave.

Crush Pizza + Tap (formerly Denver Deep Dish) *^
1200 W. 38th Ave.

Chicago thin-crust

Walnut Room *^#
3131 Walnut St.

Argentine pizza

Buenos Aires Pizzeria *^
1319 22nd St.

Beer-dough pizza

Hops & Pie *^
3920 Tennyson St.

"Beer-dough pizza" is a made up name, but the concept is not. Hops & Pie uses a specially made Hops and pIe P.A. from Strange Brewing Company to make its pizza dough.

We did our best to find and categorize this city's many, many pizza places, but our doctors and wallets strongly disagreed with trying them all in one week. Did we miss or mis-categorize one? Let us know: [email protected].