Ode: Eight-Corner Detroit-Style at Jet’s Pizza

I sat down to lunch with a friend a few months ago, and the daily special where we met up featured a personal pizza and a salad lunch combo. My pal was startled when I requested a plain cheese with zero toppings for myself. Considering my love of food, and taste for all the things, she was flummoxed that I’d go for something so painfully basic.

But the thing is, I fucking love a slice of cheese pizza. If I ate pork, I might prefer pepperoni more (the one thing I miss most from that moment when I decided to stop eating pig at age 13), but without that salty, oily, cured meat miracle, my preference is for cheese and sauce. That's it.

(And then I’ll dust my wets. No joke, I always have a parm packet in my jacket pocket.)

The wonderful thing about plain cheese pizza is that it still has variations in flavor and texture, and it’s almost always tasty enough to consume fully. I might balk at a bit o’ charcoal crust at the end (or I might just shrug and go for it), but I’ve rarely had a slice I didn’t choose to finish.

Recently, I’ve developed a constant craving for the thick and crunchy pie from Jet’s, and it’s all I can do not to have their eight-corner sent to my door on a weekly basis.

Look — my favorite slice is a hot, greasy, NY-style slab you can fold in half (preferably consumed on a street corner after midnight), with real potential to sear the roof of your mouth, leaving a hanging piece of skin your tongue can't help checking on for the next few days. I’m partial to Famous Original J’s here in Denver. And I’ve been known to have a large pie sent my way from Tony P’s or Brooklyn’s Finest. But it never travels as well or holds up as long as the Detroit-style from Jet's, especially now that delivery drivers aren't traveling around the city with insulated containers.

The rectangle of love from any of the local Jet’s comes in hot, the abundant overlayer of cheese still melty and well-anchored (it’s the worst when your pizza arrives and most of the mozz is wrinkled and stuck to the side of the box or mostly sequestered to one hemisphere). The tangy tomato sauce is warm and welcoming underneath. Each quadrilateral section, gently coaxed from the mother ship, comes away clean.

But it’s the crust that defines the experience.

Every slice of the 8-corner has two edges and two middles, which means you can work your way from the goopy goodness of the softest corner into a more toothsome thickness as you near a crisp and buttery border. You can go from chew to crunch with every slice, a hero’s journey of revelation.

But here’s the cool thing — because the cheese and sauce are spread all the way to the far reaches of the crust (no lip to speak of), you can really start your expedition from any spot on the map. Be a rebel and go from crunchy to comforting. Or start right in the middle of an edge and eat it like a 5-year-old, tomato sauce gooping up your cheeks as you work your way in. It’s a taste sensation wherever you begin.

We find the 8-corner (with its eight pieces) the perfect order, because we can put away hot slices right then and there, potentially grabbing another halfway through whatever movie we have on the tube, and then slide leftovers into the toaster oven over the next few days, because it only takes a few minutes to get that cheese bubbling again and the crust pliable.

I’ve heard Jet’s offers many toppings, and have been told their specialty pies are delicious, too… but I wouldn’t know. It’s all about the cheese slice for me.