Original, authentic pizza: vegan

Pizza got its start in Naples, Italy, sometime in the late 16th or early 17th century when Neapolitans bravely began adding tomatoes (a New World fruit believed by many to be poisonous) and spices to their oiled flatbread.

The oldest traditional Neapolitan pizza is the Marinara: dough, tomatoes, oregano, garlic and olive oil. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, which classifies "authentic" Neapolitan pizza, recognizes only the Marinara, and the Margherita, a cheese-topped pizza introduced in 1889.

Of course there were pizzas with cheese before that, but often cheese was simply another potential topping, on a par with peppers or anchovies. Upon arrival in America at the end of the 19th century, cheese- and meat-topped pizzas predominated, and the zesty Italian spices were cut back to soothe bland American tastes.

Even here in the Delaware Valley, there's a longstanding tradition of tomato pies (sometimes sprinkled with grated Parmesan). One of the earliest local pizza joints was Joe's Tomato Pies, which opened in 1910 across the river in Trenton. And many local pizza parlors (with a large Italian immigrant population, Philly was one of the key U.S. cities where pizza caught on) are justly proud of their tomato pies.

Before opening the vegan Blackbird Pizzeria, Mark Mebus said that his all-time favorite was Franco Luiggi's, at 13th and Tasker. "Their tomato pie is killer - nice thick-crust, square pizza."

And Dan Reed, of Chicago Soydairy, also stressed that "you don't have to have any cheese on pizza, dairy or otherwise." He added, "My constants are green olives, green peppers, onions . . . maybe some nutritional yeast and truffle salt."

However you slice it, pizza's history and its future go way beyond cheese.

- Vance Lehmkuhl