There's love, and then there's pizza love. Our dependence, once formed, never really goes away. From that initial bite as a ravenous kid when the taste buds hit tomato sugo, gooey cheese and salty ham for the first time, we have needed pizza in our lives. When life became all late nights and hangovers, we needed pizza. When the rug rats arrived and grew into mouths that had to be fed, we needed pizza. When the team got together after work or play, we needed pizza. I sincerely hope it's on the menu in the assisted-care homes of the future, because we'll be needing it then, too. With extra anchovies.

In many ways, pizza has grown up with us; the past decade seeing slower leavening of the dough, better quality toppings and genuinely wood-fired ovens. To find a bad pizza you'd have to stay home and order it in a box, find it under the bed two days later and reheat it in the toaster. So if good pizza is now so ubiquitous, how come everyone's opening pizza joints? And how come they're so much fun?

Because they're not Italian. For an Italian pizzaiolo, pizza comes with the concrete boots of tradition, weighing it down with rules and regulations. For a non-Italian, a crisp, charry base is just the beginning, not the end. Unhampered by the fact that he has never been to Italy, Luke Powell of Sydney's charcuterie and smoked meats mecca, LP's Quality Meats, is slinging pizza at Bella Brutta in Newtown topped with his own lush mortadella, or a puddle of clams and fermented chilli.

At Carlton's chic new Capitano, American-born chef and co-owner, Casey Wall applies a seasonally adjusted locavore approach, with toppings of broad-bean shoots or asparagus. You can even build your own pizza, adding fennel, salami, anchovy, mortadella, rainbow chard, oyster mushroom or pickled chilli.

And then there's square pizza. It's Detroit-style, apparently, baked in a pan until crunchy on the outside, and soft and cheesy on the inside. Jake Smyth and Kenny Graham, the cheeky chaps from Mary's burgers, have installed it at Mary's Pizzeria in Newtown's Lansdowne Hotel. Loving a touch of the vulgar, they've named one pizza the Mushroom F…er and another – of glazed ham, three cheeses, "red sauce" and roasted pineapple – the Tropical F…er. I don't mind the profanity, fellas, but what sort of f…er puts pineapple on a pizza?

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