Utah Valley's pizza scene is better than it has any right to be. Between Provo and Orem, you can find legitimate Neapolitan wood-fired pizza, oversized New York-style slabs, Detroit-style thick crust, and a handful of local joints that have been doing their own thing for decades. This guide covers the best of them.
The Top Tier
1. Pizzeria 712
Neapolitan/Wood-Fired · $$$ · Orem
The best pizza in Utah Valley. Pizzeria 712 fires thin, blistered Neapolitan-style pies in a wood oven with the kind of ingredients you'd find at a serious pizzeria in Portland or Brooklyn. The Margherita is the benchmark — San Marzano sauce, fresh mozzarella, basil, and a crust with the perfect char. The menu changes seasonally, and the specials (often featuring local produce and creative combinations) are worth ordering blind.
The braised beef short rib appetizer has become almost as famous as the pizza. The wine list is thoughtful. This is a restaurant that happens to specialize in pizza, not just a pizza shop.
The move: Margherita plus whatever special they're running. The Bianco (white pizza with ricotta) is excellent. Short rib to start.
Good to know: No reservations for small parties. Weekend waits can stretch to 45 minutes. Weeknight visits are significantly easier.
2. Slab Pizza
New York-Style · $ · Provo (near BYU)
Giant, foldable, New York-style slices cut from oversized pies with creative toppings. Slab is the antithesis of Pizzeria 712 — casual, cheap, fast, and built for volume. One slab is a full meal for most people. The toppings rotate daily and range from classic pepperoni to mac and cheese, pulled pork, pesto, and seasonal combinations.
This is the default pizza for BYU students, and for good reason. The price-to-portion ratio is hard to beat anywhere in the valley.
The move: Check the daily specials board. The creative toppings are usually the best value. One slab, maybe two if you're starving.
3. Via 313 Pizza
Detroit-Style · $$ · Orem
Detroit-style pizza done right — thick, rectangular, with a crispy caramelized cheese edge (called "frico") and a soft, airy interior. Via 313 brought this style to Utah Valley from Austin, Texas, and it's filled a gap that nobody knew existed. The crust is the star: golden, crunchy, and structurally perfect. Toppings are quality, and the sauce — applied on top of the cheese in true Detroit fashion — ties everything together.
If you've never had Detroit-style pizza, this is an excellent introduction. If you have, this is one of the better versions outside of Michigan.
The move: The Detroiter (pepperoni with frico cheese) is the classic. The Cadillac adds sausage and peppers.
Excellent Options
4. MOZZ Artisan Pizza
Sourdough Wood-Fired · $$ · Downtown Provo
The one this guide had been recommending to Google and not to readers — MOZZ sat in this page's structured data for months without appearing in the article at all, which is corrected here. It belongs.
MOZZ opened in 2019 under Jared and Erin Neiswender, and the first store was in downtown Provo at 145 N University Avenue before the business grew to four locations along the Wasatch Front. The distinguishing thing is the crust: a wood-fired sourdough base rather than a straight Neapolitan dough, which gives it more tang and more chew than 712's blistered, faster-charred pies. They are genuinely different products rather than two attempts at the same one, and which you prefer is a real question rather than a ranking.
It is also the most walkable serious pizza in the city if you are already downtown, which nothing else in the top tier can claim.
5. Brick Oven
Traditional/Family · $$ · Provo
A Provo institution since 1956, Brick Oven has been feeding BYU students and Provo families for generations. The pizzas are solid — not as refined as Pizzeria 712, but reliable, generously topped, and served in a family-friendly atmosphere. The homemade root beer is legendary and arguably the real reason many people come.
The move: Combination pizza plus a mug of root beer. Share a large with the table.
6. Lucky Slice
New York-Style · $ · Provo
Another strong New York-style option, Lucky Slice serves big slices from a counter-service shop that stays open late — making it one of the best post-event and late-night food options in downtown Provo. The pizza is greasy, foldable, and exactly what you want at 10 PM after a show at the Covey Center.
Good to know: One of the few late-night food options in downtown Provo.
7. Nicolitalia Pizzeria
New York/Traditional · $$ · Provo/Orem
A local chain with a loyal following. Nicolitalia does thick, hearty New York-inspired pizzas with quality ingredients and generous toppings. The calzones are massive. The breadsticks are addictive. It's not trying to be artisan — it's trying to be a really good neighborhood pizza joint, and it succeeds.
8. The Pizza Studio
Build-Your-Own · $ · Provo
A fast-casual build-your-own concept where you choose your crust, sauce, and toppings assembly-line style, then watch your pizza go through a high-heat oven in minutes. The quality depends on your choices, but the customization is genuinely useful for groups with different preferences and dietary restrictions. Good value, quick service.
Pizza by the Situation
Best overall quality: Pizzeria 712. No contest.
Best value/student budget: Slab Pizza. Giant portions, tiny prices.
Best for families: Brick Oven. The atmosphere, the root beer, and the familiarity.
Best late-night: Lucky Slice. Open late when nothing else is.
Best for trying something different: Via 313. Detroit-style is a genuine revelation if you haven't had it.
Best for groups with picky eaters: The Pizza Studio. Build your own means everyone's happy.
Best for Chicago-style deep dish: This is the newest answer on the page and it changes a gap the valley had for years. Rosati's Pizza has opened in Orem, bringing Chicago-style deep dish, double dough and the chain's thin crust, plus "The Cheef" Italian beef. Rosati's was founded by the Rosati family in 1964, and until it arrived, deep dish was the style Utah Valley genuinely did not have — Detroit-style at Via 313 was the closest thing, and Detroit and Chicago are not the same pizza. Confirm hours before driving; it is a recent arrival.
Worth knowing the field is wider than this list. Utah Valley's pizza map has thickened considerably. MidiCi The Neapolitan Pizza Company operates in Orem, Pizzeria Limone in Provo, and Nico's Pizza in Provo has built a following among BYU students specifically for staying open late. This guide ranks the ones we would send a visitor to first; it is not a census.
The styles, since this list ranks across five of them
Comparing a Neapolitan pie to a Detroit pan square is like comparing a baguette to cornbread — both bread, different arguments. Since this guide moves between five styles, here is what actually separates them, which also explains why "best pizza" has no single answer.
Neapolitan is defined by heat and speed. A very hot wood oven bakes a thin, soft, high-hydration dough in a couple of minutes, producing the leopard-spotted char and a center that is deliberately soft — soft enough that the middle of the pie does not hold a slice flat. That is a feature, not a fault, and it is why Neapolitan pizza is eaten with a knife and fork in its home city. Pizzeria 712 is the valley's benchmark for it.
Sourdough wood-fired shares the oven but changes the dough. A naturally leavened base ferments longer, which produces more tang and a chewier, more structured crust that stands up better to being carried. MOZZ works this way, which is why it reads as a different restaurant rather than a competitor to 712.
New York style is the one most people picture: a larger, thinner, sturdier pie built to be folded and eaten walking. The dough carries more oil and sugar than Neapolitan and bakes in a deck oven at lower heat for longer, giving a crust that is crisp underneath and pliable enough to bend without cracking. Slab Pizza takes this to its logical extreme with slices sized as a full meal.
Detroit style is a rectangular pan pizza, baked in a well-oiled steel pan with cheese pushed right to the edges so it caramelizes against the metal into a crisp, salty rim. The sauce typically goes on top in stripes, after the bake. The texture target is an airy, almost focaccia-like interior under a fried bottom. Via 313 brought the style to the valley from Austin.
Chicago deep dish is the one people most often confuse with Detroit, and they are not close. Deep dish is built in a tall round pan with a buttery, biscuit-adjacent crust pressed up the sides, then layered in reverse — cheese on the bottom, fillings, and a thick uncooked tomato sauce on top — and baked slowly enough that a single pie can take the better part of an hour. It eats like a casserole, and that is the point. Rosati's in Orem is where to find it.
If you are trying to settle an argument about which is best, you are asking the wrong question. Ask which one suits the evening.
Practicalities
Downtown parking is the constraint on the top tier. MOZZ sits on University Avenue in downtown Provo and Pizzeria 712 is downtown as well, which means street parking and the downtown lots on a Friday evening. Walking from a further-out space is usually faster than circling. Our Center Street dining guide covers the downtown blocks and where to leave a car.
Near BYU, the pizza is where the students are — Slab in particular runs on foot traffic from campus, and lunchtime between classes is the busiest window rather than dinner. Arriving at 12:30 on a weekday is the worst timing available.
Delivery coverage is uneven. The chains deliver across the valley; several of the independents on this list are pickup-first or work through third-party platforms with restricted radiuses, which is why a highly rated local pizzeria can appear undeliverable to an address ten minutes away. If delivery is a requirement rather than a preference, confirm the radius before you build an evening around it.
Why the pizza here is better than it should be
A city of Provo's size has no business supporting this many serious pizzerias, and the reason it does is structural rather than culinary.
Start with the population shape. BYU and UVU put a very large number of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds inside a small radius, and pizza is the food that demographic buys most reliably — cheap per head, shareable, portable, and it works for a group that assembles with no notice. That is a volume floor almost no other cuisine here gets.
Then add the constraint that shapes every restaurant in this valley: Provo's dining scene is overwhelmingly alcohol-free by default. A pizzeria in most American cities earns a meaningful share of its margin on drinks. Here, that revenue mostly is not available, so the pie itself has to carry the business. The result is a market where a pizzeria competes on dough and ingredients rather than on a bar, which is a real part of why the top end is as good as it is.
Finally, the whole spectrum survives simultaneously. Elsewhere, an artisan pizzeria and a giant-slice counter serve the same customer and one of them loses. Here they serve genuinely different occasions — a date at 712, a Tuesday between classes at Slab — and both stay full.
Ordering pizza for a group
Pizza is the default for ward activities, office lunches, dorm floors and study groups, and a few local specifics make it go better.
Count in slices, not pies. The reliable planning figure is roughly two to three slices per adult for a standard pie, more for a student crowd and less if there are sides. Ordering by pie count is how you end up with either a shortage or six cold boxes.
Order at least a day ahead for anything large. Same-day works for modest orders at most places; a genuine event order should give the kitchen 24 hours. Friday and Saturday evenings are the worst possible time to test a short lead time.
Sides do more work than a third pizza. Salad and breadsticks stretch a pizza order further per dollar than adding pies, and they give the people who do not want a fourth slice somewhere to go.
Check the day. See the Sunday note above. A group plan built around a specific local pizzeria on a Sunday is the most common way this goes wrong here.
Our catering guide covers the wider picture — including which formats suit which events and the permits a caterer should hold — and our group dining guide has the restaurants with real capacity for a party you want seated rather than fed from boxes.
Dietary needs, honestly
Gluten-free crusts are increasingly available across the valley's pizzerias, but availability and — more importantly — handling vary enormously. A gluten-free crust prepared on a shared surface, cut with a shared wheel, or baked on a shared stone is not safe for someone with coeliac disease, and a restaurant offering the crust does not necessarily claim otherwise. Ask specifically how it is handled rather than whether it is offered. That is the question that distinguishes an accommodation from a menu item.
Vegetarian is straightforward at every pizzeria on this list. Vegan is harder, because dairy-free cheese is not universally stocked here; call ahead rather than arriving hopeful.
Related Guides
- 30 Best Restaurants in Provo
- Best Restaurants in Orem
- Best Food Near BYU
- Eating on a Student Budget
- Center Street Dining Guide
- Late Night Food in Provo
- Best Pizza & Italian in Utah Valley
Last updated: April 2026. Restaurant hours, menus, and prices change — always verify directly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best pizza in Provo?
Where can I get cheap pizza near BYU?
Does Provo have Detroit-style pizza?
Is there Chicago-style deep dish in Utah Valley?
Which Provo pizza places are open on Sunday?
Where can I get pizza late at night in Provo?
What is the difference between Pizzeria 712 and MOZZ?
What is the best pizza for families in Provo?