Buddy’s Pizza (the Original)

That square, crispy-edged, caramelized-cheese pizza taking over the country? It was born at this corner in 1946. Buddy’s Rendezvous, a former Conant Street speakeasy run by Gus and Anna Guerra, started baking a focaccia-like Sicilian pie — reportedly from Anna’s mother’s recipe — in blue-steel pans borrowed from the auto factories, the kind originally used to hold small parts and scrap. Those industrial pans gave the crust its signature shape and lacy, crunchy “frico” cheese edge, and Detroit-style pizza was born.

Buddy’s still runs at the original Conant location (and a dozen-plus others now), and the pizza is still baked in seasoned steel pans, some 50-plus years old. Order a square and the antipasto salad, sit among the bocce trophies, and taste a genuine Detroit invention at its source. Only-in-Detroit detail: the city’s two signature foods — this and the Coney dog — were both perfected feeding autoworkers.