Quick: Name the American cities that have distinctive regional pizza styles. There's New York, of course, with its famous, foldable slice. The overstuffed casserole-style pizza from Chicago is almost as iconic as Wrigley Field. And the thin-crusted, delicately topped pies of California (and, originally, Naples) almost belong in a "Visit CA" ad campaign.

And of course, who could forget the pies of Trenton, New Jersey?

{crickets}

This is tomato pie, my friends. Photo by Matt Duckor

Anyone? Well, anyone who's actually tried them certainly can't. For years I've been singing the praises of Trenton tomato pie, the local moniker for their crisp-edged, tomato-forward pizza, to anyone who'll listen. And if you're anything like my co-workers, your main reaction is befuddlement—with a mild hint of curiosity. That's how I came to bring a caravan of fellow Epicurious staffers with me on blind faith to De Lorenzo's Tomato Pies deep in the heart of central Jersey.

When we arrived at the restaurant, I had to do even more convincing. Because though Trenton tomato pie is a decades-old style that developed when the Trenton neighborhood of Chambersburg was still an enclave for Italian-Americans, and though De Lorenzo's original location was a charmingly ramshackle roadhouse with no bathroom (but a line out the door), the shiny new location is in a suburban shopping center, with the kind of salads that involve fresh figs and white balsamic.

But no matter. Because the pie is the same: Like any pie called "tomato" should be, it was dominated by, well, tomatoes: a generous topping of hand-crushed canned tomatoes, seasoned just with salt, in lieu of a layer of seasoned tomato sauce. Under the tomatoes, the sparse mozzarella topping melted directly onto the crust. And that crust? It was thin but had plenty of charred backbone, without the fragility and near-instant sogginess of a true Neapolitan pie.