In “Pizza: A Slice of Heaven,” a 368-page book written and edited by Serious Eats founder Ed Levine, which proclaims itself the dish’s “Ultimate Guide and Companion,” Memphis shows up on exactly two pages, a brief entry on Coletta’s Restaurant.

This isn’t surprising.

Survey slices Memphis a raw deal on pizza

The book is dominated by pizza’s Italian roots and its American expression in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Chicago. 

Comparatively speaking, Memphis is not essential to America’s pizza story. But Memphis’ own pizza story began at Coletta’s, which introduced pizza to Memphis in the 1950s during that mid-century period when American GIs who had been stationed in Italy returned home to spread the pizza gospel, turning an Italian dish into a classic American staple. 

Memphis’ one major contribution to American pizza culture comes from Coletta’s: the barbecue pizza, a blend of Italian-American and Southern food that was first created there. Now, variations on the barbecue pizza concept are ubiquitous.

But Memphis does have its own locally specific pizza style that’s similar to but not quite the same as Coletta’s famous barbecue pies.

You won’t find “Memphis-style pizza” in Levine’s book, or any other. It hasn’t had its moment, the way “Detroit-style” had in recent years, and perhaps it won’t. “Memphis-style” pizza is not even particularly ubiquitous in Memphis anymore. But you can find it at seven locations of three different restaurants: Exlines’ Best Pizza in Town, Broadway Pizza and Fox Ridge Pizza.

Each has been in business for more than 40 years and all share a notably similar menu that can be traced back to a common origin. 

Defining Memphis-style pizza 

“Rolled deep, piled high” is a slogan you’ll find on the menu of Exlines’, which turned 50 this year and is the oldest existing maker of what it proclaims is “Memphis-style” pizza.

“The only way you can describe our pizza is ‘Memphis-style’ because, like, where else do you get 22 ounces of meat on a large? It’s a ridiculous amount of food,” said Garrett Blatnik, Exlines’ owner and great nephew of restaurant founder Walt Exline.

The two things the Memphis-style pizza at these restaurants has in common with Coletta’s is a medium-thick crust, lots of toppings and, in most cases, lots of meat. 

Perhaps Coletta’s, as the first Memphis pizza, inspired the crust style. Or maybe the Memphis-style crust came about for the same reason: to hold up under all of that meat.

“Some people complain about the crust,” Blatnik said. “I love our crust. But the crust isn’t the show. It’s all those fresh toppings on top of the crust. The crust is just a carrier to get the food in your mouth.”

Other markers of Memphis-style pizza are that larger pies, while still round, are cut into rectangular pieces rather than triangular slices. Connoisseurs prize the crispy little rounded-corner pieces that result.

Toppings are not only piled high but spread far with cheese on top, creating a caramelization around the edges.

“We put plenty of toppings,” said Lisa Seelig Gibbs, owner of Fox Ridge Pizza, which turns 45 this year. “We take it to the edge.”

“We put cheese all over the entire pizza,” said Dewanna Ishee, owner of Broadway Pizza, which has been a staple on Broad Avenue for 47 years. “I like mine well done.”

The rectangular cut and the caramelization are reminiscent of Chicago tavern-style pizza, the less well-known-but-just-as-local thin-crust cousin to Chicago deep dish. 

While exact origins are unclear, Memphis-style pizza could be described as Chicago tavern-style pizza with a thicker, Coletta’s-style crust and heavier toppings, a pizza cross-pollination that makes geographic sense. 

All three restaurants now use a parbaked crust for most of their pizzas and all get their sausage fresh from the same local provider: Fayette Packing.

Exlines’ and Broadway cook that sausage on the pizza. 

“The sausage goes on raw, and it goes into the oven,” Blatnik said. “So it takes 25 to 30 minutes to cook a pizza. To cook through the meat but not burn the cheese is extremely labor intensive.”

“It is greasy,” Ishee said of Broadway’s similar approach. “And that’s what people like.”

By contrast, Fox Ridge pre-cooks the same sausage. 

“We’re every day constantly cooking sausage in the morning,” Gibbs said.

Visitors will notice not only do all three restaurants serve a similar style of pizza you can’t quite find anywhere else, but all have a pizza on the menu dubbed the “Around the World.” 

At both Exlines’ and Broadway, an Around the World is sausage, pepperoni, green bell pepper, onion and mushroom. At Fox Ridge Ridge, it’s slightly different, with barbecue pork but no mushroom.

But that little menu commonality seems to trace back to the same long-gone place: Roy White’s Raleigh Pizza. 

Or maybe even a little further back. As Ishee has heard the tale, White’s Memphis-style pizzas developed first at a long-gone “beer joint” called the Top Hat Lounge where White made pizzas as bar food before opening his own place. 

A common origin

While none of the three restaurants are under original ownership, all have remained in the family, literally or figuratively.

Walt Exline, now 88 and retired in Florida, was a customer at Raleigh Pizza, and he and his wife Violet bought it from White in 1973, opening Exline’s Pizza in the same location and with the same menu in 1974. That location, at 2953 Austin Peay Highway, remains Exline’s home base today, with three other locations around Memphis.

Blatnik, who now owns Exlines’ with his wife, Stephanie, moved to Memphis in 2016 soon after graduating from college to work in the family business. He bought it from his great-uncle in 2021.

As Ishee tells the story, her mother, Lana Jeanette Cox, was White’s foster daughter and an employee at Raleigh Pizza. Soon after the sale to Exlines’, Cox left to open her own restaurant, using White’s menu and recipes. Broadway Pizza opened at 2581 Broad Ave. in 1977, where it remains. 

After her mother died in 2008, Ishee took over the business and now operates two locations with her sons Adrian and Andrew.

Original owner Bill Vest opened Fox Ridge Pizza on Knight Arnold Road in the East Memphis Fox Meadows neighborhood in 1979. Its connection to the pizza style seemingly traceable to White’s Raleigh Pizza is less clear, though the influence of Raleigh Pizza/Exlines’ is unmistakable. 

Current owner Gibbs, who remembers the late Vest as a baker at the Memphis Wonder Bread factory before he opened his pizza parlor, was an employee at the original Fox Ridge Pizza. He later partnered with Vest in a separate catering venture. The circuitous Fox Ridge story includes another owner to whom Vest initially sold the business, with Gibbs fully bringing it back into the family, so to speak, a decade ago.

All three restaurants boast employees who have been part of the operations for decades.

Changing with the city

These old-school Memphis pizza parlors did or do exist in some old-school Memphis places but have witnessed the city change, and have changed with it, throughout the decades. 

Exlines’ has expanded from its initial Raleigh location and currently boasts three other locations in Bartlett, Whitehaven and amid the newer growth in East Memphis with its Kirby location.

It’s also shifted over the years from a traditional neighborhood pizza parlor to more of a takeout-oriented operation. 

“It used to be a family restaurant where the store would be filled with softball teams on the weekends from the league down here in Frayser,” Blatnik said. “As those leagues dissipated, our in-house business dissipated. And of course, nowadays people like to take their pizza to go.”

Fox Ridge Pizza had already expanded to a location in Cordova along Germantown Parkway before Gibbs took ownership. Roughly five years ago, she consolidated the business to one location on East Memphis’ restaurant-rich Brookhaven Circle where high-end and down-home, new and old, share a common thread.

“They are all local. That’s what I love,” Gibbs said. “We support local.”

Fox Ridge Pizza has strengthened its new-neighborhood roots by signing on as a sponsor for the nearby 2024 Memphis Italian Festival, which will be held May 30-June 1 at Marquette Park.

About a decade ago, Broadway Pizza added a second location in bustling East Memphis, opening on Mendenhall Road, half a block north of Poplar Avenue. 

But they’ve also watched Memphis change while standing still on Broad Avenue. 

“I was born and raised on Broad, and I have seen it all,” Ishee said. “In the ’80s, before they changed the legal drinking age, Rhodes College kept this place packed. You could not get in here.”

Broadway got a double-whammy when the drinking age changed and Sam Cooper Boulevard was built, diverting car traffic away from Broad in the ’90s. 

“You could stand out in the middle of Broad and not see a car for hours. Every business closed except for us,” Ishee said. “It was like a ghost town. By the grace of God, our building was paid for, so we were able to survive.”

Now, Broad Avenue is the Broad Avenue Arts District, full of new businesses and, increasingly, new residents. 

“This is like a completely different neighborhood,” Ishee said. 

A recent renovation at the Broad Avenue restaurant included adding roll-up, garage-style windows to engage the increased sidewalk traffic. 

“They just got the apartments finished (across the street),” Ishee said. “We haven’t been able to use (the windows) because of all the construction, but when all the dust settles down, I think that will be a big thing when the weather is good.”

Working class, Southern pizza

Though these restaurants have moved into some more upscale neighborhoods or have seen neighborhoods change around them, they still offer essentially a down-home, working-class, old-Memphis variation on pizza. 

“If you buy a large Papa John’s pizza, it feeds what, two or three people? You buy a large Meat Muncher from us, it’s feeding five or six people,” Blatnik said. “You know, it’s just the bang for your buck. It’s not supposed to be a luxury item.”

“It’s not a froufrou style of pizza,” Gibbs said, even as her restaurant now rubs elbows with some more froufrou neighbors. 

The notion Memphis-style pizza is a kind of Southern home-cooking translation is underscored by the other foods you can find at these restaurants, which you wouldn’t ordinarily associate with pizza parlors. 

Blatnik has added a popular loaded baked potato menu for delivery only, technically a separate endeavor called Get Baked but made in the Exlines’ kitchen. 

Fried catfish has long been a menu staple at Broadway, and now Broadway (at East Memphis only) and Fox Ridge both offer Southern-style plate lunches. 

“When we went out (to East Memphis), I said, you know, there’s so many office buildings, let’s give it a try,” Ishee said. “And it’s done pretty good.”

You can get mozzarella sticks on the appetizer menu at Fox Ridge, but also fried green tomatoes.

And Broadway has long boasted a popular sideline of house-baked cakes, with strawberry and German chocolate among the most popular. You can add a piece, or two of three, to your pizza.

Memphis-style pizza isn’t as ubiquitous as dry ribs or chicken wings when most think of the food that defines the city. It’s not quite a stranger in its own hometown, as Elvis Presley sang, but perhaps remains a cult classic. 

But these big, usually meaty pies and the places that make them are pure Memphis in their own way.