A recent report by the Washington Post found that Americans like New York-style pizza — the thin, cheesy, by-the-slice type — over other kinds of rotund flatbreads served in the United States. The “saucy” results were determined based on an analysis of more than 7.5 million reviews collected from the crowd-sourced business review site Yelp. According to the Washington Post’s research, New York-style pizza is by far the most popular variety in 42 out of the 50 US states and in the District of Columbia. 

Coming in a distant second was its Italian predecessor, Neapolitan pizza, which emerged in its current form around 1889 in Naples. As the story goes — though some say it’s, ahem, half-baked — Queen Margherita of Savoy was touring southern Italy and took a liking to the simple, round bread sold by street vendors around the city. She summoned chef Raffaele Esposito to the palace to make her a pizza, which he aptly named the “Margherita.”