If you’d like to time-travel back to the ‘70s and taste pizza the way our parents and grandparents did, all you need to do is head for Impellizzeri’s. Let me tell you why: Pizza impresario Benny Impellizzeri has been making pizza in Louisville since he started cooking at the fabled old Mario’s in Hikes Point in 1968, when LBJ was president and the Beatles’ White Album was high on the charts. 

He opened his own pizzeria in his father’s Highlands butcher shop in 1978, turning out hot pies for long lines of eager supplicants in the evening after his father handled the meat business during the day. Save for a brief gap between locations back in the ‘00s, he’s been building his trademark hefty loaded pies ever since, accumulating a stack of “Best of” certificates on the wall.