Detroit was the birthplace of the American car. It is the city that gave us Motown, and techno, and the first recorded licks of John Lee Hooker. And it is also the homeland of one of the country’s most distinctive and long-overlooked pizzas — a square-cut, cheese-bordered, hearteningly thick and often-sauce-slathered slab that can invoke enough comfort to smother a heart attack.
And now, finally, as long as you’re fast enough to snag one each day, you can get those four-corner pies from a food truck in Hampton Roads.
Since last summer, starting as an occasional special when parked at Hampton’s Oozlefinch Beers & Blending or Sly Clyde Cider, Flame and Pie Mobile Pizzeria has been slinging an admirable take on the Motor City pie: beauteous square slabs intimidating in their heft, with inch-thick dough both airy and chewy at once, draped in sweet-spicy marinara and a half-pound of gooey cheese.
Those slices are part of a thick-slice revolution newly rising in Hampton Roads, from the excellent Roman al taglio slices at Prosperity Kitchen to the on-point New York-style Sicilians at Brooklyn Pizzeria in Virginia Beach.
But Detroit-style has been a sudden national pizza obsession over the past five years, so trendy in the country’s major food metropolises that the New York Post felt threatened, and called them the “new hipster horror.”
Still, Detroit slices have been slow to hit Hampton Roads — though they’ve long been available in Virginia Beach, at our state’s sole outlet of Detroit-based chain Jet’s Pizza, at 4402 Princess Anne Road. But while the eight-corner pies at Jet’s are hearty and tasty grease-bombs, Flame and Pie’s painstaking local slices amount to a hefty level-up.
The key to Flame and Pie’s Detroit slices is its deft Sicilian-style crust, whose dough is rubbed with olive oil and proofed inside the pan until it expands to snuggle up to the blue-steel sides. That crust manages to puff up with airy character while still maintaining its chew, a sturdy ground for an intimidating volume of toppings.
Flame and Pie’s Glenn Allen learned about the pizza style years ago via the late Detroit-area pizza chef Shawn Randazzo, who rocketed Detroit-style pies into the national consciousness in 2012 after winning World Champion Pizza Maker of the Year at Las Vegas’s International Pizza Expo — a trade show for people in the pizza business, who later brought the style back to their home cities.
“Randazzo wanted everybody around the world eating them,” Allen said. “I watched his videos, went to YouTube University, joined some groups, talked to a lot of people. I kept learning how to do these things.”
Allen spent years perfecting his rendition alongside wife Donna, who sidelines as a biscuit baker at the Coliseum location of Chick-fil-A in Hampton — dialing in the temperature and cook times to make it airy and crisp but not dry, while avoiding the all-too-common gumminess that mars many deep-dish pies.
They managed to procure the same style of tall-sided blue-steel pans used by Detroit-style pizza’s inventor, Gus Guerra of Buddy’s Pizza, in 1946. According to myth and legend, Guerra got his first pizza pans from an auto plant, which used them to hold spare parts.
“I picked up 24 pans and started messing around, experimenting on friends and family,” Allen said.
Though Flame and Pie is best-known for the wood-fired pies the Allens make during the warm season, the Detroit pizzas are baked in the electric deck oven Flame and Pie uses for the much-thinner “New York” pies they serve during the cold months, tuned to the same white-hot 600 degrees.
To get Detroit pizza’s famous cheese-bordered sides, Allen piles his cheese at the edges of the pan so it slips down against the metal sides as as the pizza bakes. The result is a rich and caramelized cheese-wrapper for the pie, like the bacon around a date. Unable to get the traditional Wisconsin brick cheese, Allen improvised a blend of mozzarella and Muenster, to get just the right texture.
Flame and Pie offers some wild variations on the pie, including a signature Flaming Pie with chili-spiked tomato sauce and chipotle aioli, plus spicy sausage and capicola. There’s also a chicken-bacon with the Southern-Midwestern addition of ranch dressing.
But the true test of Detroit majesty is the saucy red-top pie, with two stripes of marinara spread across its cheesy top like twin mohawks. And as with any well-made pizza, Flame and Pie’s plain cheese rendition is delicious all by itself: character-filled dough with visible air bubbles, blessed char beneath its skirt, and a mountain of cheese and well-seasoned sauce.
Add some thick Liguria pepperoni that crisps up into little grease-filled cupolas, or the protein cornucopia on the Meaty pie — thick Detroit pizza crust can withstand a mess of piled-high toppings without incident — and it is pure porky-beefy bliss, a thumping answer to the more delicate Neapolitan. Consider it a thick-blanketed pie made for harsh Detroit winter, the snuggie of pizza.
Just be sure to order in advance. Flame and Pie has just 24 of those expensive blue-steel pans on hand to proof their dough. And that means only 24 lucky customers each day, tops, can pick up a four-piece pie that’ll fill up most regular humans with just two slices.
No need to take your chances, however: Flame and Pie was a fast convert to online ordering during the pandemic, once customers became less inclined to gather at breweries and events.
And so once you check their Facebook page for their location each day, usually between Wednesday and Saturday, you can flip to their ordering page and reserve your pie in advance, with the time slot you plan to pick it up. On our visits, the pie was ready within five minutes of the prescribed time.
The pizza truck pops up most often at Oozlefinch and Sly Clyde, and at other spots on the Peninsula. Southside appearances are a bit more rare, and there’s a reason for this.
Turns out Glenn Allen has to heat up his ovens for hours before service, and there are some issues involved in taking a hot oven through a tunnel — “a bit of a pucker factor,” he said. Even with the electric deck oven he uses in winter, he has to stop off at the inspection station before the tunnel, and shut his propane off. The James River Bridge can make for a long detour when using the wood-fired oven, but he doesn’t really like the idea of using the tunnel.
“With the wood-fired, we’ve got a fire going, smoke pouring out of the trailer,” he said. “Even on regular streets, people have stopped me to tell me I’ve got smoke coming out…. I don’t want to show up on the evening news.”
if you go
The spot
Flame and Pie Mobile Pizzeria
The vibe
Mobile pizza truck with an oven trailer, cooking up charred wood-fired pies in the summer, creatively topped “New York” pies in the cold — and newly, some thick Detroit-style square slabs
Order this
The fluffy-crusted and charred, wood-fired pies are a treat in the summer. In the winter, the play is those Detroit square slabs, nearly unique in the region, in particular the red-top cheese, pepperoni or meaty pies
Hours: Variable, mostly Wednesday through Saturday at locations on the Peninsula
Food prices: 10-inch wood-fired or New York pies, $10-$13; 8-by-10-inch Detroit pies (feed two), $14-$16; ice cream sandwiches, $5
Drinks: Soda, plus (usually) nearby beer at the brewery or cider spot where they post up
Kid-friendly? It’s pizza
Vegan/veg/gluten: Gluten-free and vegan are not much of a thing here. But there are plenty of veggie toppings to choose from, and the cheese pizza is already good
Reservations? Reserve pies online at toasttab.com/flameandpie/v3
Parking: Depends where the truck posts up
Contact: 757-269-1617. Check facebook.com/flameandpie or flameandpie.com for schedule of locations
Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com
