Buffalo-Style Pizza: The Cup-and-Char Pie Western New York Built

Buffalo is better known for chicken wings and beef on weck, but its pizza has a following of its own. Food writer Arthur Bovino, who wrote Visit Buffalo’s Buffalo-Style Pizza Trail, sums up the pie as cup-and-char pepperoni on plenty of cheese and sweet sauce, over a thick, airy base whose edge is slim or missing because the toppings spill right over it.

What makes a pie Buffalo-style

No body sets rules for it, so the definition comes from the people who eat it. The descriptions agree on four things:

• A thick, airy crust. Thicker than a New York slice, with a light, soft crumb that Bovino says has “little structural integrity,” and only a slim rim, or none, because the toppings run to the edge.
• A sweet sauce. Bovino and Wikipedia both single out the sweetness.
• A lot of cheese. Mozzarella, heavy enough to “guarantee a stringy pull,” in Bovino’s words.
• Cup-and-char pepperoni. Small slices that curl into cups with charred rims and a pool of fat in the middle. Bovino calls it “the baseline” of the style.

The pies on Bovino’s trail are mostly round, sold whole or by the slice. Wikipedia’s entry also lists a square cut among the style’s traits, so expect both.

The pepperoni

Cup-and-char is the part of Buffalo pizza that has traveled: small slices of pepperoni that curl into cups as they bake, with charred rims and a little pool of fat. In J. Kenji López-Alt’s tests for Serious Eats, pepperoni made in a natural or collagen casing and sliced medium-thick cupped the most. Why it happens is covered in pepperoni science.

The Buffalo name most tied to it is Battistoni. The company’s own site dates its cured meats to 1931 and to recipes founder Umberto Battistoni brought from Italy, and calls itself the home of Cup and Char pepperoni (checked October 14, 2026). A 2005 Buffalo Toronto Public Media report on its sale to Buffalo’s Rich Products says Battistoni was founded in 1931 “at Bison Products,” the company’s earlier name.

The pizzerias behind it

Buffalo-style pizza has no single inventor. It took shape in the city’s neighborhood pizzerias from the 1940s and ’50s on. A few of the names that come up again and again:

• Santora’s, founded in 1927, is called Buffalo’s oldest pizzeria in Visit Buffalo’s pizza trail.
• Bocce Club began in 1946, when Dino Pacciotti and his brother-in-law Michael Sacco bought a bar with bocce courts. According to the Pizza Hall of Fame, pizza came a couple of years later, after they found an old oven in the basement, and in 1955 Bocce introduced Buffalo’s first takeout pizza in corrugated boxes.
• La Nova was started in Tonawanda in 1957 by Joe Todaro, “Papa Joe,” and his son, “Big Joe,” moved it to Buffalo’s West Side in 1973, according to Visit Buffalo’s profile (checked October 14, 2026).
• Imperial Pizza was opened in 1992 by David Powers and Jim Bouris, who had both worked at Bocce.

Making a Buffalo-style pie at home

There’s no published Buffalo pizzeria formula to follow, so this is a topping adaptation of a complete published pan-pizza recipe, not a copy of any pizzeria’s pie. The base is J. Kenji López-Alt’s foolproof pan pizza, a dough pressed into oiled 10-inch cast-iron skillets and baked in them. Make its dough as written, use its pans and its 550°F (288°C) oven, and change only the toppings:

1. Sweeten the sauce. Bovino and Wikipedia both single out the sweetness. Start from your usual pizza sauce, such as one from how to make pizza sauce, and add sugar to taste.
2. Go heavy on the cheese. Grate low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella from a block and take it right to the pan wall, enough for the “stringy pull” Bovino describes.
3. Finish with cupping pepperoni. Lay small-diameter cupping pepperoni over the cheese, overlapping toward the rim. If you slice your own from a stick, cut it about ⅛ inch (3 mm) thick.

The heavier cheese and pepperoni are the adaptation, and nobody has published a tested bake time for them on this base. Bake to cues rather than the base recipe’s clock: cheese browned in spots, pepperoni cupped with crisp edges, and a golden-brown underside when you lift an edge with a spatula.

Pepperoni to look for. Pepperoni sold for cupping, such as Battistoni Cup and Char, Margherita natural casing pepperoni or Ezzo. Most pre-sliced supermarket pepperoni lies flat. The pepperoni science page explains what to check on the label.

Some links above are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, jayarr.pizza earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Sources

• Arthur Bovino, “Buffalo-Style Pizza Trail,” Visit Buffalo (accessed October 2026): the style’s defining traits and the histories of Santora’s, Bocce Club, La Nova and Imperial.
• Wikipedia, “Buffalo-style pizza” (accessed October 2026): sweet sauce, heavy mozzarella, square cut, and no single inventor.
• Pizza Hall of Fame, “Bocce Club Pizza”: the 1946 purchase, the basement oven and the 1955 takeout boxes.
• Visit Buffalo, La Nova Pizzeria profile (checked October 14, 2026): the 1957 Tonawanda founding and the 1973 West Side move.
• Lactalis American Group, Sorrento Hall of Fame profile of “Papa Joe” and “Big Joe” Todaro: La Nova’s 1957 founding.
• Battistoni, official website (checked October 14, 2026): the 1931 date, Umberto Battistoni’s recipes from Italy and Cup and Char pepperoni.
• Buffalo Toronto Public Media (WNED), “Rich Products Purchases Battistoni Italian Specialty Meats” (March 17, 2005): the sale and the Bison Products name.
• J. Kenji López-Alt, “Foolproof Pan Pizza,” Serious Eats, as given on this site: the base recipe for the home adaptation.
• J. Kenji López-Alt, “Why Does Pepperoni Curl?”, Serious Eats (December 2012, updated April 24, 2023): casing and thickness results for cupping pepperoni.