SINGAPORE - Perhaps as a protest against the pro-protein diets of the last few years, pizza came back with a vengeance in 2021.

The seeds for unbridled carbo-loading had already been sown in the last three years, and took off in 2020 when the pandemic hit and people self-soothed with comfort food such as bread, noodles, pasta and pizza.

Restaurants and businesses such as Lucali BYGB - an offshoot of the Brooklyn, New York pizza brand - Small's, Chooby Pizza and 4AM Pizza, plus private-dining outfit Casa Nostra, were offering Neapolitan-style pizza, the kind with the puffy rims or cornicione, made with long-fermented dough and topped with esoteric and classic ingredients.

Artisanal, you might call them, not the sort of pies one might order for movie night.

This year, more pizza restaurants sprouted up and some existing ones upped the ante.

4AM went from doing tastings to get feedback to opening at the Interim Market on Sentosa. Casa Nostra began a proper restaurant in Joo Chiat called La Bottega Enoteca.

New names popped up - Wild Child Pizzette by The Cicheti Group opened in Circular Road, offering wood-fired pizza; Proper Slice BYGB off Gemmill Lane, selling thin-crust pizza by the slice like in New York; and Goldenroy Sourdough Pizza in Little India, offering San Francisco-style sourdough pizza for delivery and takeaway.

More businesses are fighting for a slice of the pizza pie too.

These include Daniele's Pizza by former Grand Hyatt chef Daniele Colaiacomo, which operates from a cloud kitchen in Tampines; Pipi Pizza, serving thin-crust pizza with toppings such as aged wagyu and mentaiko aburi seafood; and Wala Pizza, a private dining business offering Neapolitan-style pizza.

Heavyweights in the pizza-verse are expected to open here next year.

Roberta's, the hip pizza restaurant from Brooklyn known for its wood-fired pizza, is opening its first overseas outpost at Marina Bay Sands early next year.

American chef Nancy Silverton, credited with changing Singapore's pizza game when she opened Pizzeria Mozza at Marina Bay Sands with chef Mario Batali and restaurateur Joe Bastianich in 2010, will open Osteria Mozza at the Hilton Singapore Orchard.

And still there is room to grow.

Neapolitan-style pizza might be all the rage now, but in food fad-mad Singapore, might Chicago-style deep dish pizza, and Roman-style thin-crust pizza sold by the slice also take root here?