"Slice and the City" looks at the mouth-watering research of a York University scholar who ate his way through hundreds of slices of pizza on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. This article tells a tale of immigrant patterns and the migration of food in two Great Lakes cities--Toronto and Buffalo. The research is unique and the subject matter unusual for a Ph.D. thesis. The historian was interviewed and his dissertation dissected in service of the piece. The writing style aimed to capture the out-of-the-ordinary flavor of the research. Accompanying original photography, of pizza and the academic himself, drew the reader in to savor the innovation of the scholarship, a York University specialty.
From the Judges
The writing is sharp and engaging and somehow manages to make a thesis on pizza sound legit. The lede is fantastic. The pizza puns are great--they add some humor, but they aren't overdone and don't disrupt the flow of reading.
