Pizza may be Italian in origin, but it is quintessentially American in attitude: Sometimes cracker, sometimes deep and doughy, always cheesy at its core. Indeed, we are passionate about our pizza; ask any aficionado if they prefer authentic New York versus Chicago style or gourmet versions of their favorite pie. With 94 percent of Americans eating and 62,000 restaurants serving pizza, we just can’t seem to get enough.

Brian Dwyer can’t either. The owner of 1,000 items of pizza memorabilia (including a Frisbee, comics, troll dolls, and other eclectic collectibles that Guinness Book has sanctioned as the world’s largest), he and three partners earlier this month opened the first museum ever dedicated to all-things-pizza.  Located in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood, Dwyer’s Pizza Brain is also a working restaurant specializing in artisan-style.

The guy surely seems sincere; he even sports a tattoo of himself holding a slice saying “totally awesome.”  In a recent NPR “All Things Considered” interview Dwyer said that he doesn’t want Pizza Brain to “look like an Applebee’s or a Hard Rock Café or Cracker Barrel with ephemera just stapled to the walls.”

Hey, anybody who uses “ephemera” and Cracker Barrel in the same sentence must be taken seriously. For food historians and pizza lovers alike, might be worth checking out.