The Pizza Shack

The world’s best pizza can only be had in Italy, where crusts are crispy and paper-thin.

The second-best pizza on the planet comes out of the coal-fired ovens at Angelo’s Pizza in New York. Third-place honors go to Hell’s Kitchen in Vancouver, with the pies from Angelini in Bangkok, Thailand, coming in fourth.

Incredibly, the world’s fifth-best pizza is being baked and served daily in, of all places, Jackson, Mississippi, at an unlikely hole-in-the-wall on North State Street: Pizza Shack.

I know, I know. That kind of hyperbolic introduction sets the bar pretty high. But I’ve eaten pizza all over the globe, and when i say this place is serving great pizza, I know what I’m talking about.

As the name suggests, the Pizza Shack (North State Street, no web site) ain’t exactly high-fallutin’. You won’t find the lofty ceilings of the Old Venice Pizza Company or the neo-industrial brickwork of the Broadstreet Bakery here. In terms of decor and ambience, the PIzza Shack could easily be mistaken for a cafe in a gas station.

The over-taxed air conditioner can’t compete with the ovens in back. On summer afternoons, the blazing sun streams through the plate glass windows, raising the dining room temperature by ten to twenty additional degrees. Lines are long. The front counter is woefully understaffed. The frazzled young woman who clears tables, takes orders, pours drinks, and answers the phones will, no doubt, very soon succumb to some dire, early-onset stress-related illness.

And none of this matters.

Because at Pizza Shack, the pie’s the thing. The shop offers more than a dozen gourmet pies (my personal favorite is the Carnivore), and any of them are great examples of the pizza-maker’s art. Each one features a thin, crispy, flavorful crust; each is weighed down with a mound of toppings the size and shape of an inverted salad bowl. The smallest pie — the individual — is more pizza than even I can eat at one sitting.

The sandwiches are equally good, and not for the faint of heart, as they, too, are stacked high with veggies, meat, and cheese. If you want more than soda to wash down your Pizza Shack pie, options include draft beer on tap (including Southern Pecan, a delightfully woody local brew) and a cooler packed with bottled imports.

In a city dominated by McPizzas (in one alternative paper’s recent contest, clueless diners recently elected Papa John’s Pizza as the best in town), the Pizza Shack is the real deal.

Don’t get me wrong. There are other local shops and Mississippi-based chains in town, and they all have their merits. Soulshine Pizza used to be a strong contender; unfortunately, they’ve chosen to flee the city, and by the time I get a pie home from their outlying locations, it’s gone all cold and greasy. Old Venice Pizza Company’s rotating menu of by-the-slice lunch specials will do in a pinch … but Old Venice’s pies are merely average (and the chefs are stingy with toppings, to boot). If I’m at Broadstreet Bakery at night, I’ll order the sausage and pepperoni pie — but the pizza menu here is all too limited, and the pizzas are too stiff, preppy, and repetitive to be unique.

Here in the City of Dreams, world-class attractions are pretty hard to come by … so get yourself down to North State Street, get in line behind the doctors and nurses from the hospital across the street, and order yourself a Pizza Shack pie.

You’ll get more than a pizza. You’ll get six slices of bliss.