Imo’s Pizza

Imo’s is the pizza St. Louis argues about, and the branch on South Jefferson is one of dozens across the region. For a visitor, eating here is less a meal than a local rite of passage.

The chain began in 1963, when Ed and Margie Imo opened a small carry-out on Thurman Avenue in the Shaw neighbourhood, kitted out with a second-hand oven, two refrigerators and a stove bought for seventy-five dollars between them. By 1985 there were thirty parlours across the region and the family began franchising.

What they created along the way is St. Louis-style pizza, and Imo’s is where it was defined. The crust is cracker-thin and unleavened, the sauce is sweet and heavy with oregano, the toppings run edge to edge, and the whole thing is cut into squares rather than wedges – which is where the slogan about the square beyond compare comes from.

The cheese is the part that divides opinion. Provel, invented in St. Louis in 1947, is a processed blend of cheddar, Swiss and provolone that melts to something closer to a sauce than a lid. Visitors are frequently appalled by it. St. Louisans, on the whole, are not – and a good many people who grew up here will tell you, entirely sincerely, that pizza elsewhere tastes wrong.

This branch sits on South Jefferson, a short distance from the eastern end of Cherokee Street, which makes it an easy stop from Cherokee Antique Row for anyone who wants to find out what the argument is about.