DiCarlo's Pizza, the family-run chain credited with inventing Ohio Valley-style pizza, is coming back to Pittsburgh with a new shop at 1200 Brookline Boulevard. The family expects to open before the end of the year, though no official opening date has been set.
The new location sits just up the hill from DiCarlo's former spot on Saw Mill Run Boulevard, according to Audacy/KDKA. Anna DiCarlo said her son Nick owns the restaurant and has been around the business his entire life, and that Brookline was a natural choice because many customers from the old Saw Mill Run Boulevard shop came from the neighborhood. “We chose Brookline because when we were on Saw Mill Boulevard, a lot of our customers were from Brookline,” she said.
DiCarlo's has not publicly confirmed an opening date, and Patch reports the company has been hiring employees for the pizzeria as it prepares to open. Anna DiCarlo said red tape and other hurdles have kept the family from announcing a firm date after it had hoped to open over the summer.
A Family Recipe Dating Back to 1945
Founder Primo DiCarlo opened the first DiCarlo's location in Steubenville, Ohio, in 1945, per the same report from Audacy/KDKA. The family introduced the recipe to Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1949, according to DiCarlo's Pizza. Today, DiCarlo's has locations across Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee, Patch notes.
The signature square pizza is known for its cheese and toppings added after the pie comes out of the oven, with Anna DiCarlo's operation using freshly shredded provolone. Weelunk reports that the family used its own bread recipe for the pizza dough, since the DiCarlo family bakery had a reputation for great bread, but baking the cheese and sauce together in the tray made the crust too chewy — so the toppings went on after baking instead. Elsewhere, PMQ Pizza has reported a different explanation, that the cheese may have burned if it were added before baking; the dossier does not resolve which account is accurate.
Decades on Saw Mill Run Boulevard
Sources differ on exactly when DiCarlo's first arrived in Pittsburgh. Weelunk dates an early Saw Mill Run Boulevard location to 1951, while Pittsburgh Magazine places the opening of DiCarlo's third location, also on Saw Mill Run Boulevard, in 1952. Either way, DiCarlo's had a Saw Mill Run Boulevard location in the early 1950s.
Ohio Valley-style pizza itself traces back to Steubenville in the 1940s, according to Axios, and has since migrated up the Ohio River into Beaver County and Pittsburgh, as reported by Pittsburgh City Paper. At least a half-dozen other pizza shops in the Ohio Valley now serve their own version of the DiCarlo's style, per Weelunk's reporting, and additional DiCarlo's locations — some family-owned, some franchised — have opened across Eastern Ohio, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Kentucky and South Carolina, according to PMQ Pizza.
Pittsburgh's Crowded Pizza Landscape
Pittsburgh has never had one signature pizza style of its own, even though several distinct styles exist within an hour's drive, Pittsburgh Magazine has noted. Ohio Valley-style competitors already serving the region include Police Station Pizza in Ambridge, which layers a cheese blend and toppings onto a thick, airy crust after baking, according to Axios. Patch identifies Beto's on Banksville Road and reports that it adds cold, hand-shredded provolone and uncooked toppings after the bake.
DiCarlo's return to Brookline puts the pizza pioneer back in direct competition with the very style it helped popularize across the region decades ago.
