Nick Swanson says the tricks he learned while working in Michelin restaurants has shaped his culinary approach to simple food like pizza.
Urban Field’s classic Detroit style pepperoni with “lattice” cheese lining its edges.
It’s hard to miss Antonio’s on Main Street with the red, white and green plastered across its facade.
It’s a Friday night, and you’re desperate for good pizza. You pop into your favorite spot — a small, buzzing restaurant that conveniently has the second-best cheese slice in the world. But the host looks at you and says it’ll be an hour-long wait. You’re starving. What do you do?
If you’re in Longmont, just walk down the street: The next pizza shop might be even better.
Forty-five minutes north of the Mile High City, you can follow the scent of garlic and cheese anywhere on Main Street and find yourself inside one of the best pizza joints in the state — maybe even the country. Over the past few years, Longmont has been quietly turning its downtown into a culinary super highway featuring unapologetically local spots with international acclaim.
A handful of these restaurants have teamed up with the city to launch the Colorado Pizza Festival in perhaps the best town in the state to grab a slice. Now, Longmont is ready to claim the title of Colorado’s pizza capital.
“The pizza festival itself is going to raise awareness of Longmont as a mecca or an up-and-coming mecca, like New Haven is,” says Anthony DeSousa, owner of Antonio’s Real New York Pizza.
“New Haven's got like 100 years. Downtown Manhattan, 100 years. We don't have that. So what we've got to do is just keep attracting talent. And if anyone says, 'Let's go have pizza,' we want them to think at the same time: ‘We gotta go to Longmont.’”
A decade ago, suggesting a trip to Longmont for pizza would’ve been grounds for expulsion from the group chat. Why make the trip with places like Blue Pan Pizza and Cart Driver in Denver, or Michelin-pedigreed spots like Pizzeria Locale — now Pizzeria Alberico — right on Pearl Street in Boulder?
At the time though, Longmont had a hidden gem that’s since garnered statewide attention as a destination pizzeria. In 2014, Pennsylvania native James Ross turned the ovens on, started tossing East Coast-style pies to hungry customers, and Rosalee’s Pizzeria quickly became the go-to haunt for Longmonsters.
“I didn't really think there was necessarily an overabundance of pizzerias that really spoke to me,” Ross says. “I thought that there was definitely room for another interpretation of a Frankenstein of, ‘What is East Coast pizza?’”
There are many regional styles in the American pizza canon. You’ve got the classic thin, crisp-but-foldable New York Style. Then there’s coal-fired New Haven pies with black-charred underbellies and old-world charm. In the Great Lakes metro, Detroit has its own thick, square slices famed for caramelized cheese lining the edges of the pan like garden lattice — and of course Chicago’s dueling heavyweights: thin and crackery tavern style versus the gluttonous deep dish.
But there's no distinct Colorado style, despite Beau Jo’s trademarked claim to “Colorado Style Pizza” that’s hardly been replicated. Much like Frankenstein’s monster, pizza in this state is an amalgamation of regional styles brought in by transplants, riffed on by locals and sewn together, reanimated by the high-voltage hunger of residents who just want a good slice.
“We're not put in a sandbox,” says Nick Swanson, co-founder and culinary director at Urban Field Pizza and Market. “There's so many transplants here. Colorado isn't known for just one style. And that's why I think this state is so special.”
After Urban Field opened in 2022, Longmont’s pizza scene leveled up. Swanson, a North Shore Bostonian, says their signature Detroit-style pies are really a combination of three styles: Roman, Sicilian and of course Motor City’s own creation. The result: a pillowy soft bite, blanketed with sweet sauce and bubbling cheese, fenced-in by crispy mozzarella edges, so good the International Pizza Expo crowned it the fifth-best Detroit-style pie last year.
A few years later, Anthony DeSousa brought his Estes Park institution to Main Street, Antonio’s Real New York Pizza, completing Longmont’s pizza Frankenstein. Their extensive menu isn’t limited to New York style — they’ve got Detroit, Sicilian, Neapolitan — but their award-winning cheese slice catapulted the small city into pizza capital conversations.
“We all elevate the game of pizza,” DeSousa says. “It doesn't matter who does it. If we all continue to strive to make it better, we get somewhere.”
With three world-class pizzerias, it only makes sense for Longmont to host the Colorado Pizza Festival on Sept. 5. Hungry attendees will be able to sample slices from more than 23 of the state’s best pizzaiolos.
But its evolution as a pizza town wasn’t just natural selection. Business owners got a little push from the nurturing hands of a city that’s been trying to build a robust culinary scene for years.
“We wanted [Downtown Longmont] to become an arts and entertainment district, and an anchor of that arts and entertainment district was food,” says Kimberlee McKee, executive director of the Longmont Downtown Development Authority (LDDA).
Main Street has managed to preserve its historical charm. The street is lined by 20th century brick buildings with keystone plaques detailing the storied pasts inside their walls. Opening a modern restaurant in a once-abandoned turkey plant is a difficult task, though.
“We know that we have wonderful historic buildings which are sometimes very hard to retrofit into restaurants, so we have a number of incentives to help people invest in their properties,” McKee says.
Prospective restaurateurs can take advantage of thousands of dollars in incentives through a number of LDDA programs. The authority will cover 25% of facade improvements, capped at $50,000 for restaurants, craft beverage or entertainment establishments. A separate grant offers 25% coverage of up to $22,500 — with a $7,500 match from the city — to convert a property into retail space. They’ll even cover a quarter of the costs up to $3,500 for signage.
“They want to put Longmont on the map,” Swanson says, who received $25,000 of LDDA investment to convert the once-abandoned Butterball Turkey factory to an award-winning pizzeria. “They want to make it a destination, and they're willing to do whatever they can to help support local businesses to make Longmont more desirable for people.”
A block up the road, LDDA investment in Antonio’s is loud and unabashedly colorful. DeSousa’s infusements totaled $56,000 to convert the once-vacant space into his second location, brandishing an Italian flag the size of Long Island painted on the building’s brick exterior.
“He took a building and really created a brand new pizza vibe,” McKee says. “Not only did these folks invest in their great food, they invested in our properties and our communities.”
Since the LDDA launched these incentive programs, the city has awarded $2.5 million across 386 projects in the district. Swanson says it’s helped turn Longmont into a destination that goes toe to toe with Boulder.
“Longmont has been in the shadow of a Boulder for so long and hasn't gotten the respect and credibility it deserves,” he says.
“Now I could sit here and easily argue that Longmont has just as good of a food scene, if not better than Boulder at this point,” Swanson continues. “And more eclectic, in my mind.”
With Longmont’s deep roster of bluechip pizza joints, each with a trophy case full of hardware, it would be natural to assume this burgeoning food scene would breed rivalry and competition. But it’s done the opposite.
“When we opened, people were like, ‘You're crazy to open up down the road from Rosalee’s,’” Swanson says. He heard the same comments when DeSousa opened Antonio's in 2024. “It's like, ‘No man, that's not how it is.’ We all couldn't be closer; it couldn't be a more friendly pizza community.”
A healthy food ecosystem has options. If you can’t get a seat at Rosalee’s, walk a few blocks until you hit Urban Field. Don’t have time to wait for a whole Detroit pie to crisp up? Hop across the street and grab a slice at Antonio’s. Back in Long Island, where DeSousa was raised on a steady diet of red sauce and olive oil, this is the norm.
“It wasn't uncommon to have four different pizzerias on four corners across the street from each other,” he says. “What it does is make it a mecca.”
“You're going to get families that fight about whose pizza is better: ‘No, I like this one. No, I like that one,’” DeSousa continues. “The bottom line is they're all good.”
There’s no infighting between the family of pizza restaurants setting up shop on Main Street. Earlier this year, Antonio’s, Urban Field and Rosalee’s joined forces to launch the nonprofit Pizza With Purpose to combat food insecurity on the Front Range after federal budget cuts threatened disruptions to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program in 2025. They soon cooked up the idea for the Colorado Pizza Festival to raise money to fight hunger.
At its core, the fest is about breaking bread around the community dinner table. The man with the second-best cheese slice in the world isn’t in it for the competition.
“The greatest piece of the whole thing that could come out of it would be collaboration,” DeSousa says. “The entire world is divided. Why not bring people together around a food that makes everyone happy?”
ON THE PLATE: Colorado Pizza Festival. 1–10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 5, 4th and Kimbark streets, Longmont. $20
