Pittsburgh’s culinary reputation continues to rise. The Steel City locked up the No. 5 spot in the “The Best Cities for Pizza Lovers — 2017 Edition,” according to a new study by SmartAsset.
SmartAsset, a New York City-based finance technology company, assessed Pittsburgh as “the most affordable pizza town in our study.” The ’Burgh boasts more than 270 pizza places with about 16 percent of these ranking above 4.4 stars out of a total of 5 stars on Yelp, a crowd-sourced reviewing platform.
This finding comes after Pittsburgh ranked fourth in a SmartAsset study in January, and Zagat, a crowd-sourced restaurant ranking website, named Pittsburgh the best foodie city of 2015.
SmartAsset looked at 150 of the largest cities in the U.S., analyzing the total number of pizza places in a city, average quality of the pizza places, the percentage of high-ranking pizza places and the number of possible pizza parlors per 10,000 people. The study also factors in the local cost of living, in turn based on an MIT living wage study that examines metrics at the county level.
Pittsburgh’s pizza falls a few points behind — ranked from first to fourth — Detroit; Buffalo, NY; New York City and Vancouver, Wash. The ’Burgh beat out Peoria, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix, for the No. 5 spot.
Jeremy Reynolds: jreynolds@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1634.
First Published: September 8, 2017, 4:35 p.m.
