I lived in Iowa City for my first 22 years, Califo...

I lived in Iowa City for my first 22 years, California for eight since. Pagliai's is the hometown restaurant I miss the most. I would eat here weekly in college, and I still stop in whenever I'm in town. It's a local hotspot, somewhere I always run into a familiar face even now.

They make a simple but delicious pizza with crust in a style which I think is called "Chicago thin", much firmer and crunchier than New York style and nothing like the deep dish most people think of when you say Chicago. Pagliai's is the best example of it I've found in Iowa. In California, nothing's even close - there's Italian-style, New York-style, deep dish, and Pizza Hut-ish chain pizza.

If the crust is too thin for you, order double-crust. My friends and I would always order two pizzas: (1) sausage, green pepper, onion, double-crust, cut in squares; (2) green pepper, black pepper, onions, cut in squares. I recommend them both. More common pizzas like ham/pineapple are good here, too, as is garlic baked into the crust.

Price: as a college student, I would have come here even more if it weren't so expensive. As a professional in California, it seems cheap. So all I should say to you is two people splitting a well-topped large with generous tip and tax costs $13 apiece; make up your own mind what that means.