What Jerry's Actually Is
Jerry's Pizza opened on Michigan Avenue in the 1950s, which puts it firmly in the original wave of Detroit-area pizzerias. It's not some novelty. It's been a working restaurant for working people for over seventy years. The place serves Detroit-style rectangular pizza with that thick, airy crust and the caramelized cheese edges that everyone talks about but very few places actually get right. You walk in, you point at a slice size, you wait, you eat. That's about it. I've eaten at Jerry's probably two dozen times over the years. The consistent thing about going there isn't the atmosphere — it's the food itself. The crust has a particular density to it. It's not bread-like, exactly. It's somewhere between focaccia and a proper deep dish, with enough oil in the pan to fry the bottom into a crust that stays crisp even after sitting for a while. The cheese is usually brick cheese, which is the traditional Detroit choice, and if they're doing it right you get those brown lace-edged fragments along the perimeter where the cheese touches the metal pan directly. The sauce typically goes on top rather than underneath, which is the standard Detroit method, though some locations vary on that. The thing most people miss when they go to Jerry's for the first time is that the slices are enormous. A single "personal" slice can easily be half a pie depending on how they cut it. The menu looks simple because it is. Pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, green pepper, olives, bacon — the usual toppings. They don't do anything fancy with them. The pepperoni cups and gets slightly crispy at the edges, which is what you want. I've watched people order what they think is a reasonable meal and then end up with food that feeds three people. Don't make that mistake. Order one slice and one thing if you're eating alone. That's the smart play.
The location on Michigan Avenue tends to run hot during lunch hours on weekdays and around dinner on Friday and Saturday evenings. If you go between eleven and one in the afternoon on a Tuesday, you'll be the only person in line. The staff moves efficiently during slow periods but slows down noticeably when the place fills up. I learned this the hard way once when I drove forty minutes from Livonia specifically for a late dinner and ended up waiting twenty-five minutes just to place my order. The workaround is straightforward: go early or go late, and never on a Friday after six unless you have nothing better to do with your evening. There's a common misconception that Detroit-style pizza is just deep dish from Chicago with a different shape. It isn't. The crust is completely different. Deep dish uses a buttery, flaky pastry crust that's more like a pie shell. Detroit-style uses an oiled, focaccia-like dough that gets pressed into a rectangular steel pan, often the kind formerly used for industrial sheet pans. The oil in the pan is critical. It creates that fried crust boundary and the signature cheese lace. Jerry's has been using the same type of pans and technique since they started. You can taste the difference when a place cuts corners and uses a nonstick pan instead of bare steel. Another detail people overlook is the brick cheese. Most places outside of Michigan either don't know what this is or substitute with mozzarella. Brick cheese has a firmer texture and a sharper flavor than standard mozzarella, and it melts differently under high heat. When Jerry's does it right, the cheese has a slight tang that cuts through the richness of the crust. If you've ever had Detroit-style pizza elsewhere and it tasted like nothing special, that's probably why. The cheese matters more than most first-time visitors realize.
The parking situation at the Michigan Avenue location is mediocre at best. There's a small lot in the back and street parking along the road, but both fill up fast during peak hours. I've arrived at the lot and turned around three separate times because it was full. If you're coming from the western suburbs, plan for an extra ten minutes of circling or use the side streets off Warren Avenue that run parallel to Michigan. It's not complicated but it's worth knowing beforehand. Jerry's doesn't do delivery through their own operation. They've relied on third-party services and phone-in orders for pickup for years. The quality holds up reasonably well for carryout — the crust stays crisp if you let it steam off for a minute after taking it out of the bag — but it's genuinely better eaten in the building or brought home immediately. I tried sending an order through DoorDash once during a winter storm and the driver called me three times because he couldn't find the entrance to the parking lot. That's not the food's fault but it is a real problem if you live far away. The prices are reasonable for what you get. A whole large pie runs somewhere in the mid-twenty range with toppings, which is about average for Detroit in 2025. Individual slices are priced per slice rather than by weight, and a large slice will set you back eight or nine dollars depending on the topping. It's not cheap but it's not expensive for the portion size. You're getting a substantial meal, not an appetizer.
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There are a handful of Detroit-area pizzerias that also claim to do authentic Detroit-style pizza. Buddy's is the most famous one and honestly the one that gets the most press. DiAnoia's is another solid option. But Jerry's holds its ground because it's been doing the same thing consistently for decades without rebranding or chasing trends. Some places try to modernize and lose something in the process. Jerry's hasn't done that. The menu hasn't changed substantially since the 1980s, which says something in an industry where everything seems to rotate every few years. If you're coming from outside the area, don't expect a sit-down experience in the traditional restaurant sense. The interior is functional. Vinyl booths, fluorescent lighting, a counter where you pay and pick up your food. It's not unpleasant, it's just not designed to impress. The focus is entirely on the pizza. That's actually a feature, not a bug. It means the staff spends their energy on the food rather than table service or ambiance management. One thing worth noting is that Jerry's has had its share of family ownership transitions over the decades, which is pretty standard for independent Detroit restaurants. The current iteration maintains the same basic product. Some long-time regulars swear the quality was better in the 1990s, but that could be nostalgia or it could be something real. I've been going since the early 2010s and the pizza has been stable within my timeframe, which is the only data point that actually matters.
The simplest advice I can give is this: go on a weekday afternoon, order a large slice with pepperoni, sit down and eat it slowly. The pizza is good enough to warrant paying attention to it. Don't rush it. That's basically the whole thing.
