This is not a pizza. This is a Chicago hand grenade.It seems like I got on the wrong side of a few local pizza aficionados with my off-hand remark (in a post about Playboy choosing the top ten pizzas in the United States, of all things) about the pride of Chicago, the deep-dish pizza, not being considered a pizza at all–at least not by the standards of any right-thinking young American.Everyone loves pizza, I wrote. More importantly, everyone loves fighting about pizza–who has the best, the worst, the most authentic, what style rules (New York thin) and what shouldn’t really be considered pizza at all (Chicago-style deep-dish which might just as well be a casserole).I know. I’m a jerk. But rather than just name-calling, why not suggest something that might change my mind? It’s put-up-or-shut-up time, Seattle.I understand that there are regional derivations in pizzas (which start thin as anything in the hallowed pizza fields of Brooklyn, then slowly get fatter and more ridiculous the further west they travel, peaking in Chicago, then thinning again, and attracting all manner of weird Spago-esque toppings as they continue on toward California), and that definite historical antecedents exists for the kind of deep-dish nonsense they get up to in the Windy City, like the French tarte a la tomate (a proper pie with a slightly raised crust, filled with tomatoes and other savory ingredients), the swollen-crust Roman Lazio-style pizza, the pissaladiere from Provencal (again, with a thicker crust and anchovies on top) and, most notably, the raised (or “coffin”) pies of the British culinary tradition in which large, free-standing crusts were built up and filled with everything from pork to eels, I’m still sticking to my guns here. You can call me a douchebag all you want (real clever, by the way), but Chicago deep dish? Tomato pie, not pizza. A crusted casserole that has more in common with the Italian timpano than it does with a perfect New York-style thin-crust red-and-white. And this is coming from a man who has eaten them in the deep-dish’s ancestral homeland and still not been swayed from his East Coast bias.But, because I am an accepting cat, I have a challenge for you deep-dish boosters out there in Hotcakesland. Tell me where the best Chicago-style pizza pie is in the city of Seattle, and I will go there. With an open mind and a loving heart, I will dig in (with a shovel, most likely) and see if there’s a deep-dish revelation waiting for me in my new home. I don’t think that there will be, but hell… I’m willing to try anything once. And most things twice. So bring your A game, Seattle. Battle it out amongst yourselves in the comments section and let me know when you’ve reached some sort of consensus. My appetite and I will be waiting.Ready…? Fight!