Are you ready for this review? Maybe I should call it a rant.\n\nI grew up in the Chicago area, home of three distinct, indigenous styles of pizza. I know pizza and consider myself a pizza snob, which is different than a pizza chauvinist. A chauvinist only likes one kind of pizza, usually the one they grew up with, and will insult all other styles. I, on the other hand, appreciate high quality, lovingly prepared pizza of every style.\n\nThe South is pretty much a pizza wasteland. Most people's concept of \"pizza\" is Papa John's, which is fast food. They want to feed six people for fifteen bucks, with cheap, doughy, conveyor-belt-oven pizza. Ugh.\n\nAnd every time I've lived somewhere new, someone will always say, \"Oh, man, so-and-so is the BEST pizza,\" and 100% of the time, that person is always wrong. For example, Fuel Pizza in Charlotte is popular, but it is inedible. Just lame. It's like a slightly higher end version of Papa John's.\n\nAnyway, I write all this to establish my pizza \"bona fides,\" as they say. And lemme tell ya, Luisa's pizza is simply amazing. The dough is a slow-fermented thing of beauty. It has a delicious flavor, soft in parts and crispy in parts, with a good hole structure and a nice cornicione (if you're not a pizza geek, Google it ;-)). The toppings are appropriately applied so as to maintain the perfect balance of ingredients. \n\nThis is one fine thin crust pizza. It isn't exactly \"NY\" style, but maybe \"NY elite\" with a side trip to Italy. The recipe and brick oven are from an Italian family (Luisa herself, before she sold the place to Jeff many, many years ago). \n\nThis is the only pizza place in Charlotte that I will spend money at. Everything else is a waste of time and money. Do yourself a favor and eat at Luisa's. Trust me on this.
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