🚀 go-pugleaf

Maryland pizza is an accurate description of the Ledo's product. Baltimorons
may disagree, no doubt they've always had access to better stuff in their
Italian neighborhoods - but Michael R. Leavitt is correct. Ledo's pizza is 
popular merely because for many years, it was the only pizza available in
the DC suburbs of Maryland. Many afficianados are too young to remember,
but pizza was one of middle America's youth/pop culture discoveries of the 
1960's, and throughout that decade, the only pizza options in this town were 
Ledo's in Maryland, Mario's in Virginia, and the few authentic Italian 
restaurants (like AV's on New York Ave) that would serve it. Hence pizza was a 
mystery food to a lot of people back then, when I grew up within walking 
distance of the original Ledo's. At the nearby public schools I attended, the
cafeterias served an abomination that was termed 'pizza' - squares of some 
cardboard-like pastry dough topped with ground beef and American cheese - and 
many of the kids really liked it! (I suppose because it was really just a weird 
cheeseburger). But those of us that got to visit Ledo's knew better. After
some competition began to appear, like Pizza Hut in the early 70's, we found 
out what pizza should really be like; yet certain diehards remained loyal to 
Ledo's inferior dish. Around 1980 the Fireside restaurant, up the road in 
Berwyn Heights, became a satellite outlet for Ledo's, even though the real goods
were by then available across the street at Three Bros in Beltway Plaza. Ledo's
has continued to expand, because that's the name many older, provincial 
Washingtonians conjur up when they think of pizza. But now you know better, too.