I Asked AI For Missouri’s Best Pizza Places – It Chose 6 Pizza Joints

As many of you know, I've never met a pizza I didn't like. That's not 100% true, I'm from Chicago and a pizza lover so I do have some opinions on pizza. That said, a pizza has to be really lousy for me not to like it.  For example, the pizza place in Joliet, Illinois, where it seemed they mixed the pizza sauce in a dirty ashtray. I mean that was the taste of the sauce. I can even argue that Little Ceasers is a good pizza... for the money. Yaknow?  So I was curious where artificial intelligence would steer me when I asked the following questions:

Chat GPT spit out Imo's Pizza in St. Louis, Pizza da Gloria in Kansas City, and Dewey's Pizza in St. Louis. I thought asking Chat GPT for the top three pizza joints might have been slightly limiting. I also wondered how the list might change if I asked the question in a more open-ended way.

So I asked Chat GPT the same question without limiting it to the top three pizza places. You can read what I asked below, as well as ChatGPT's standard disclaimer about how determining the best pizza joints can be subjective.

This is fun, but I bet you want to know what it told me, right? First, the broader question didn't change the top three pizza joints from my first query. However, it added two more pizza places from St. Louis and a must-visit pizza place in Columbia.

IMO's Pizza came in first. IMO's website touts they are the originator of The Original St. Louis Style Pizza. What makes it St. Louis? A think, crispy, crunchy, crust-covered edge-to-edge with toppings. The pizza is cut into squares. And their mix of cheddar, swiss, provolone and Provel. IMO's is a chain, so there's no shortage of stores in the St. Louis area, and I have seen their frozen pizzas at Walmart.

Placing second was Pizzeria da Gloria in Kansas City. Chat GPT made a boo-boo with this one. Pizzeria da Gloria is in St. Louis, not Kansas City. They describe their pies as, "wood-fired light & crispy pizza."

Bluntly, Pizzeria da Gloria wouldn't be my first choice for pizza. One look at the online menu tells me it's too fru-fru for my taste.

Rounding out the Top three is Dewey's Pizza. Dewey's is a chain with stores in the Kansas City and St. Louis areas. Additionally,  you can find them in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, Cleveland, Columbus, and Dayton.

The Dewey's Original is a simple cheese pizza. It comes with red sauce and mozzarella and according to Dewey's website is "baked to perfection." At first blush, if a place calls their cheese pizza the "original" and can get that right, they probably can get specialty pizzas right too because it all starts with the cheese pizza.

If anything is disappointing about the top three choices ChatGPT chose, it's that two of them are chains. Nothing wrong with chains, but even though IMO's is a St. Louis thing, it's still not like finding a really special place.

Moving on, when I broadened out the question, ChatGPT suggested Pizzeoli, another wood-fired pizza joint. Along with Shakespeare's Pizza in Columbia and II Pizzaiolo in St. Louis.

I won't get into Pizzeoli, other than it placed 39th in Yelp's top pizza spots in the U.S. and Canada. Once again, I'm not a wood-fired pizza guy generally, so I'll take a pass on it personally. You might enjoy it though.

I was excited Shakespeare's in Columbia made the list. I've heard it's a must-try pizza joint. My problem, most of the time I'm in Columbia, which isn't that much, I'm just driving through. So I get my White Castle fix, or occasionally after a show, my  Waffle House fix. Yet, I may have to go for a pizza.

Shakespeare's motto is, "It’s the pizza, stupid. And maybe the beer. Everything else can go fly.” I like that. They also reinforce my thoughts about cheese pizza when talking about their Good Ol' Plain Cheese Pizza. "Many say that you should judge a pizza joint by its plain cheese pizza. We agree. A very economical choice and everybody likes it."

Finally, I couldn't find an II Pizzaiolo in St. Louis. There's one in Pennsylvania and what looks to be a small chain in Canada, however, I couldn't find a St. Louis pizza place with that name online. So either Chat GPT had another boo-boo, or this St. Louis pizza joint really needs to get in the 21st Century and get a website.

Final thoughts, Chat GPT's suggestions weren't horrible. IMO's is a pizza I want to try, just because you can't escape it in the St. Louis area. Dewey's looks good on their website, yet, being a chain if I found myself in Kansas City, I might be inclined to try Grinders or Minsky's before Dewey's just because I've heard good things about both those joints and in my mind, they're more uniquely KC.

The place on the list I most want to try is Shakespeare's in Columbia. It's the kind of pizza place I wish ChatGPT had focused on as opposed to the wood-fired joints or more regional chains. But like I said, I've rarely met a pizza I didn't like, even if it was wood-fired and a little fru-fru.

Here's what ChatGPT had to say about all six pizza joints: