If you live in the United States, you can't drive for more than two blocks in any major city or town without seeing a pizza parlor. You would think that they were giving away gold at these places the way they're packed throughout the day. So what is it with these establishments that Americans just can't get enough of them? We'll take a look at some of the finer points of your not so finer eating place.

For one thing, pizza parlors, sometimes referred to as pizzerias, are open much later than most of your other restaurants in the states, except maybe for your late night diner, which we'll cover in another article. Pizza parlors are many times open til past midnight. Most don't even open until after 12 noon as very few people have pizza for breakfast, though I am sure there are some people who would eat it then too.

As for the food itself, well, that really depends on the parlor itself. They are not all the same. The smaller ones usually don't have much of a selection. As a matter of fact, there are some pizza parlors that only have maybe two or three varieties of pizza. The most common ones for the small parlor are plain, sausage and pepperoni. Maybe you'll get an extra cheese as well, but that's about it. Also, with these really small places, most of which you can find on the beaches, they don't even sell whole pies. It's by the slice and that's it. And don't expect anything other than a slice of pie and a soda or fruit drink.

As we work our way up to the larger places, the next size parlor will usually have a couple more varieties and also make whole pies. These places will usually have a soda case where you can pick out from a variety of drinks. Or you can order a fountain drink as well. The prices of these parlors are also usually a little lower than the places that only sell slices because they work on a higher profit margin since they don't have as much product.

Finally, we get to the really large pizza parlors. These places will have just about every type of pie you can think of including mushroom, anchovy, broccoli, Sicilian and a host of others. You can usually see the variety of slices lined up on the counter as you walk in. But pizza isn't where these places stop. You can also get a host of other items such as hot and cold subs. The hot subs are usually meatball and sausage. The cold subs are a variety of cold cuts such as roast beef, turkey, salami and ham as well as a number of cheeses that they cover these with. And then finally, many of the large parlors have hot meals as well such as spaghetti and meatballs, ziti and linguini and clam sauce. Their drink selection is also usually off the charts as well.

Of course if you just want a plain slice of pizza, in the good old US of A, you can go just about anywhere.