The trend has even reached the cocktail-centric culture of Los Angeles. At Bar Next Door, a West Hollywood establishment, owner and bar director Brynn Smith recently introduced a "bar pie" menu to mark the venue’s third anniversary. Previously, the bar allowed guests to bring in square slices from the neighboring Prince Street Pizza. However, Smith noticed that the heavy, thick-crust slices often led to "food comas," prompting customers to end their night early.
The switch to a tavern-style format was a strategic business move. Because the pies are lighter and more manageable, guests can snack without feeling overly full, encouraging them to stay longer and order more drinks. The pizzas are produced exclusively for the bar by the team at Prince Street, but they are branded as bar pies to align with the establishment’s identity as a social hub rather than a traditional restaurant.
Ultimately, the resurgence of tavern-style pizza is inseparable from a broader cultural longing for the "tavern" as a social institution. For Bradley Shorten and his wife Meg Schmitt, who co-operates La Merna in D.C., the goal was to recreate the specific "vibe" of a Chicago dive bar or a classic Wisconsin supper club. These are spaces defined by wood-paneled walls, checkered floors, and red leather booths—environments that feel homey, lived-in, and entirely devoid of pretense.
This shift in restaurant design reflects a move away from the "millennial minimalism" of the 2010s toward a more maximalist, cozy, and nostalgic aesthetic. The tavern-style pizza shop, with its roots in a simpler era of American dining, fits perfectly into this new landscape. It offers diners a sense of familiarity and comfort, inviting them to sprawl out, stay for hours, and share a meal that was designed from the ground up for communal enjoyment.
In Portland, the Grosvenors are leaning into this total immersion. Beyond the pizza itself, they have expanded their menu to include other Midwestern cultural touchstones, such as Bosco sticks—the cheese-filled breadsticks famous in Midwestern school cafeterias—and Italian beef sandwiches served with spicy giardiniera. Their mission is not just to sell a product, but to embody a specific feeling.
"We’re just trying to embody the feeling," Brennan Grosvenor says of their approach. "If you went into a tavern in Chicago, what could you order there?" That question is being answered in cities across the country, as the "party cut" continues its steady march across the American map, one crispy, square-cut slice at a time.
