LIFE Of SLICE

OH, PIZZA. THAT MOST BELOVED OF ENTRÉES. WHILE THERE ARE AS MANY WAYS TO ENJOY PIZZA AS THERE ARE HUMAN BEINGS, THESE OKLAHOMA RESTAURANTS KNOW HOW TO DO PIE RIGHT.

- GREG ELWELL

YOU KNOW WHAT they say about pizza, right? “Even when it’s bad, it’s pretty good.” But with respect to whoever coined that saying, there is such a thing as bad pizza, and it is an insult to good pizzas everywhere to say otherwise. Even reduced to the bare minimum of what is considered pizza—crust, sauce, and cheese—there is so much that can go wrong. Even when it’s bad, it’s pretty good belies the pure hubris of the modern pizza-consuming public. Wet, underdone dough; a sickly sweet sauce that’s more grease than tomato; a layer of flavorless cheese congealed into a thick dairy tile studded with mealy toppings—pizza can go awry in so many ways.

Yet the existence of a nadir also demands the existence of an apex. By and large, most pizzas fall into a thick band of acceptable pies. But there is an upper crust, if you will, of Oklahomans dedicated to elevating the craft of pizza to delicious art.

IF YOU ASK fans of Empire Slice House about the pizza, be prepared for a deluge of superlatives. But the Oklahoma City pizzeria’s cofounder Rachel Cope knows the secret: Before opening, she and cofounder Avery Cannon’s first attempts at pizza were less than convincing to their landlords.

“We did a tasting, and it did not go as we wanted,” she says. “The appetizers and stuff were great, but the star of the show was not.”

But with her heart set on the Plaza District space, Cope, with the support of her family, in 2012 attended the International School of Pizza in California with thirteen-time World Pizza Champion Tony Gemignani.