Five Routes Through
One Region's Tradition.

Old Forge calls itself the Pizza Capital of the World, and the locals are not joking. The town of just over eight thousand people has more pizzerias per capita than almost anywhere in the United States, and the rectangular tray pizza served here is a regional dialect that exists nowhere else.

In 1936, Ghigiarelli's became the first place in the area to sell pizza commercially. The shape stuck, the technique stuck, and the families who built it are still running the kitchens today.

The Back Mountain runs north and west of Wilkes-Barre into the lakes. Its pizza tradition is built on a fried, crispy crust style that almost no one outside the region has ever encountered. The closer you get to Harveys Lake, the more this becomes a sunset-and-pizza ritual rather than a meal.

Grotto Pizza opened on the lake in 1960, when a former Pennsylvania state trooper named Frank Parente started selling pies from a small shop on the shore. The original location is still there, and it still matters.

Drive twenty minutes south of Old Forge into the Wyoming Valley and the pizza changes character entirely. The sauce gets noticeably sweet. The cheese gets blistered. The crust thins out. This is the South Valley dialect, and it is fiercely defended by everyone who grew up on it.

Some trace it to wartime sugar rationing reversing course in the late 1940s. Others swear it is a deliberate balance against high-acid Pennsylvania tomatoes. Either way, it is a tradition that exists almost nowhere outside this twenty-mile radius.

Pittston sits between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre on the Susquehanna River. It is small, walkable, and quietly home to one of the best concentrations of Italian-American food in the Northeast. The pizza tradition here has two layers: the old-world bottle shops, and a modern wave of pizzaioli treating the region's heritage as a living thing.

Sabatini's bottle shop has been a national wine destination for forty years. Across town, Tomato Bar runs a wood-fired program that would hold its own anywhere in the country.

A fifth route through Scranton is in development for 2026. Full lineup announced at launch.