San Diego is the No. 13 Best City for Pizza Lovers

There’s no better way to celebrate National Pizza Day on Feb. 9 than by chomping down on a big pizza pie.

Which cities are serving up the best slice?

LawnStarter compared the 200 biggest U.S. cities to rank 2023’s Best Cities for Pizza Lovers.

To come up with the ranking, LawnStarter looked for cities with plenty of highly rated pizza vendors and award-winning pizzerias. LawnStarter also considered pizza affordability and popularity.

New York stands tall in first place as the capital of the Pizza Belt and the nation’s pizza empire. All competition folds in the wake of the Big Pizza, which has more than a 40-point lead over the next-best city, San Francisco.

New Yorkers might act superior about their slices, but they have good reason to. New York pizza vendors have a high average consumer rating, and they’re recognized internationally. Out of all U.S. cities, NYC had the most pizzerias included in Italy’s international pizza guide in recent years.

Italian immigrants brought pizza to New York and America at the beginning of the 20th century, but you don’t have to stay in Little Italy to find a cheesy pie. You can’t go far in NYC without encountering one of more than 1,500 pizza vendors feeding the city.

We all know Chicago (No. 3) serves iconic deep-dish pizza, but what about San Francisco (No. 2), Miami (No. 4), and Las Vegas (No. 5)?

Each of these four cities baked their way into the top five, thanks to abundant Access and numerous Accolades. San Francisco beat out Chi-town with more affordable slices (when adjusted by income) and more pizzerias recognized by international pizza awards.

If you prefer to judge pizza by consumers’ tastebuds, check out pizzerias in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Frisco, Texas; and California cities Oxnard and Chula Vista. These smaller cities stood out in Quality, with plenty of highly rated pizza vendors to pick from.

Golden State cities spread out across our ranking, with two landing in our top 10 and four in our bottom 10. While it’s easy to find a decent pie in big cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles (No. 6), and San Diego (No. 13), that’s not the case for smaller cities in California.

Unfortunately, cities like Moreno Valley, Bakersfield, and Salinas, crisped to the bottom, along with Hayward in last place. These four cities dough not offer many impressive pizzerias, with some of the lowest rankings in Quality, Popularity, and Accolades. They also knead more options: Apart from Bakersfield, these places lack pizza vendors to choose from.

For each of the 200 biggest U.S. cities, LawnStarter gathered publicly available data on the factors listed in the table below.

LawnStarter then grouped those factors into five categories: Access, Quality, Accolades, Popularity, and Affordability.

Next, they calculated weighted scores for each city in each category.

Finally, they averaged the scores for each city across all categories.

The city that earned the highest average score was ranked “Best” (No. 1), while the city with the lowest was ranked “Worst” (No. 200). (Note: The “Worst” among individual factors may not be 200 due to ties among cities.)

How does San Diego stack up?

San Diego’s Rank in Some Key Metrics (1st = Best)

• Number of Pizza Vendors – 7th
• Share of Highly Rated (4.5+ Stars) Pizza Vendors (With 10+ Reviews) – 22nd
• Total Points for “Top 50 US Pizzas” Ranking (Past 3 Years) – 26th
• Average Monthly Google Searches for Pizza-Related Keywords Over Past Year – 7th
• Average Pizza Price (as % of Average Weekly Household Income) – 44th