Now granted, the wife and I were only in town for four days, so taste-testing them ALL would be dang-near impossible – especially since Chicago’s type of pizza is so very filling! – but we at least tried to hit up one different pizza spot each day. This was the list of pizza places we were hoping to get to (in alphabetical order): Gino’s East, Giordano’s, Lou Malnati’s, Nancy’s, Pequod’s, Pizano’s, and finally, Pizzeria Uno (or “UNO Pizzeria & Grill,” as it’s known outside of Chicago). We got to four and a half of those. I now FINALLY understand why Chicagoans can never agree on their preferred pizza vendor – it's because all the places listed here focus on totally different aspects of the pizza experience!
If you like cheese, Giordano’s is definitely the place for you. They stuff soooo much cheese in their deep dish that it makes sense why they’ve become arguably the most mainstream Chicago pizza place out there, considering pretty much everyone that loves pizza, loves cheese. However, this pizza is also among the priciest of the bunch probably because of the fact that they’ve become so mainstream!
Case and point...
So on day one of our trip, after getting settled in, the wife and I walked over to the Navy Pier. We had actually planned on hitting up a Giordano’s that was located just around the corner from our hotel, but were pleasantly surprised to find one located inside the Navy Pier we were already visiting.
So when we got there, we immediately put ourselves on the waiting list and told the lady at the register what it was we’d like to order (they told us it would be 45-60 minutes before it’d be our turn, and then they’d start baking our pizza, which would take another 45 minutes).
So with plenty of time to kill, which we were planning on doing at the pier that day anyway, we shopped at some of its stores (which turned out to be quite useful, considering we bought some Chicago souvenirs for our family members there, as well as some Chicago Cubs merchandise for the game we’d be attending at Wrigley Field the next day), we rode the famous Ferris Wheel out back and listened to some live music on an outdoor stage overlooking Lake Michigan.
When finally it was our turn to go eat, it was well worth the wait, as this cheesy delight was what was awaiting us…
However, if cheese ain’t your thing because you fancy yourself more of a sauce person, then you should probably avoid Giordano’s, and head instead to…
Though this restaurant chain is also ridiculously well known, their ingredients taste fresher and more hand-made. In fact, their whole ambience is that of a homely family-run business, as evidenced by the family photos adorning the tables within their iconic Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue.
Considering how many Chicagoans have raved about this place to me, I was truly surprised by the fact that it was among the cheapest of the five pizza bills I saw.
The wait time at all these places is pretty much the same, considering they’re baking an inside-out pizza wherein the sauce sits atop the cheese, which sits atop the toppings, which sits atop the crust. You can always expect to wait anywhere from 1-2 hours as they make it, so what you do instead is what we did, just put your name on their list, give them your order in advance, then turn your dinner plans inside-out as well by doing dessert BEFORE dinner. No, seriously, Ghirardelli’s chocolate is in the neighboring building, so after we notched our place in line, we then notched our place in front of a hot fudge sundae, reserving a little room in our bellies for this saucy yumminess that was to follow…
Frankly, we were lucky to have eaten here at all, since the place had only just re-opened two weeks earlier from their COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. Hooray for the pizza gods on that one!
Now, if neither the pizza’s cheese nor sauce are what hook you, then maybe you’re more of a crust lover? If that’s the case, avoid the aforementioned two, and instead work your way over to the little hole in the wall that is...
This place is a little out there in more ways than one. First, for tourists, it’s probably a little further out geographically then most of the other pizza places on this list, but it’s well worth the drive, trust me! Also, the logo is very funny, but odd, as the late owner was a bit eccentric and liked to bring the literary world into his entrepreneurial food chains. (More on that below.) And lastly, that same owner, Burt Katz, was a master baker, so he got uber-creative when deciding what his pizzas would taste like moving forward. Fortunately, we now get to reap the benefits of that innovative spirit at this locale.
So first, let’s go back to that funky logo mentioned above. It features a whale with a thong on its head, thereby becoming – hands down – the most unique logo in this bunch of pizza chains (and possibly also among all the pizza chains in the world). In case you don’t get it, the name Pequod’s is a reference to Capt. Ahab’s 19th-century Nantucket whaling ship in Moby Dick, which continued a stream of literary references for Pequod’s now-deceased founder, as Katz’s previous restaurants included the now-closed Inferno (as in Dante’s Inferno) and the still-going Gulliver’s (named for Gulliver’s Travels). The thong part of the logo came about in the ‘90s, when the pizza chain’s ownership decided to come up with wacky marketing ploys, one of which was to sell women’s thongs at the bar, a practice that they’ve since sadly stopped doing. End of a very weird era!
So anyway, back to what makes this pizza so imaginative. It’s all in the crust! While working at other food places in his early restaurant days, Burt used to mess around with the crust to see if he can make them taste better. Remember the days when people used to just dispose of their crusts after eating a pizza? Well, Burt Katz is probably the reason they no longer do that – because he brought actual taste to our crusts. After experimenting with several different mixtures, he finally picked his favorite, and the winner was his caramelized formula. This delicious addition gives Pequod’s pizzas a crunchy feel that other places just can’t reproduce – at least, not this well!
Bonus points: Since this place is still essentially a hole in the wall and requires a wee-bit of travel to get to, it’s the least known of the bunch, and therefore serves the most inexpensive of all these pies.
I’m sure all Chicagoans are yelling at me by now, since I have yet to mention their precious Gino’s East. Don’t get your whale panties in a bunch, my friends, I’m getting there!
So how exactly do I explain Gino’s East? It’s all about atmosphere at this pizza place. It’s also about word-of-mouth hype. Lots and lots of word of mouth! All the celebrities who visit Chicago absolutely rave about this place, so much so that the original location on Superior Street, right in the heart of the Magnificent Mile, even features a very long hallway of autographed celebrity headshots, all of which are signed praising this establishment. Here’s just one portion of it, so that you can see just some of the presidents, royals and billionaire entertainers that have visited this spot…
In case that wasn’t enough to get you in the door, Gino’s started working with T.V. shows in the ‘90s to build them up even more. Some of you my age may remember that episode of Sister, Sister where Tamera drives for hours to go with some acquaintances to score Gino’s East pizza all the way in Chicago (from Detroit, for those of you unfamiliar with the show). Really, Gino’s East does a great job with their marketing!
They also do a great job of creating a hands-on atmosphere at their original location, as they allow guests to graffiti up their walls (upon request), creating a fun venue that feels like an anti-establishment local music scene hangout, but which costs enough for the actual establishment to be okay with promoting this chain, as well. In other words, they’ve got the perfect balance figured out to unite all the classes...
However, how does the actual food stack up? Is it really worth all that hype?! Well, I will say this – they’ve got ample menu items to choose from, so you don’t necessarily have to stick to just the deep-dish pizza here. In fact, I don’t even think that pizza is their best menu item, as the locals seem to prefer Gino’s chicken wings over their deep dish. But if you do decide to go the pizza route at this joint, at least know that you will have some very interesting things topping your buttercrust creation.
On our recent visit, for instance, the wife and I ordered the Buffalo Chicken pizza, which came adorned with all the usual stuff, but it also came topped with chopped red onions, celery and carrot relish. I’m not one for attempting to “health” up my gluttonous carb intake, so maybe I just don’t get the pizzas at this place – maybe that’s more down your alley, though? – but I do appreciate having so many choices from which to select my meal, even if it does come at a heftier cost...
Now, remember when I said we visited four and a half Chicago pizza chains? What I meant by that was that we planned it out well enough to make it to five of our preferred seven, and we fully intended to visit five (with Pizzeria Uno being the fifth local spot we were going to hit up), but then suddenly, life happened. When it came time to tackle the fifth chain, we were simply too stuffed from all the previous pizzas we’d eaten, and we also realized we had forsaken all the equally-famous hot dog places in the area, so we had to make a split decision. We didn’t have enough space for Uno's, but we had just about enough space for Portillo’s hot dogs, so we went there instead. (My lord, those hot dogs are good!)
But anyway, we rectified our decision by not completely giving up on tasting that fifth pizza. We told ourselves that we'd be traveling to Orlando the very next weekend, and we already knew Orlando has its own UNO locations, so we'd just hit up that fifth chain in O-Town rather than in Chi-Town, when in the "Magic City" rather than when in the "Windy City," and that's exactly what we did! Hence, we visited five Chicago pizza spots because of our four-day trip to Ferris Bueller's playground. But since not all five pizzas were actually tasted in Chicago, that's why we only ate at four and a half Chicago pizza spots.
The title of this section doesn't mean that Uno's has the best pizza, as any of the four chains mentioned above will definitely give them a run for their money in that department. It just means that they are generally believed to be the first Chicago chain to create a deep-dish pizza, and as such, they became the first to make a national media splash.
The first Uno's was established in 1943 by former University of Texas football star Ike Sewell and his former World War II G.I. friend Ric Riccardo in the River North neighborhood of Chicago. While Sewell and Riccardo are known as the owners of the original restaurant, a 1956 article from the Chicago Daily News asserts that the original deep-dish pizza recipe was created by chef Rudy Malnati Sr., the father of Lou Malnati.
Controversy always seems to follow Chicago pizza successes, though, as people still also bicker back and forth over whether stuffed pizza was the May 1971 creation of Rocco and Annunziata "Nancy" Palese at Guy's Pizza, the couple who later went on to open the Nancy's pizzeria chain and who claim to have based this new pizza style on Rocco's mother's recipe for scarciedda, an Easter specialty pie that was all the rage in Turin (Italy), or whether it was created in the summer of 1974 by Efren and Joseph Boglio, the founding brothers of Giordano's, who were bringing new life to their own Italian mother's scarciedda recipe. No matter who you believe in that sordid affair, the end result of getting to devour a super cheesy pizza makes everyone happy!
But anyway, I digress, let's go back to talking about Uno's now...
Whatever you believe, one thing is almost certain: none of the above four chains would have ever picked up steam and gone mainstream(-ish) had it not been for the sort of “rockstar" status that Uno's gained in the media. Whether you know it as Pizzeria Uno (because you’re actually from Chicago where they still only have two locations, aptly named “Pizzeria Uno” and “Pizzeria Due” – or “Pizzeria One” and “Pizzeria Two,” for you non-Italian speakers) or as UNO Pizzeria & Grill (because you’re from outside the Chicago area, and that’s the name they branded themselves with across the rest of the nation), you’ve definitely at least heard of this chain, even if you haven’t eaten there. No matter who created the recipe that led to it, UNO was definitely the chain that made "Chicago-style pizza" a term.
So that being said, how's their pie taste nowadays? Honestly, it's good and family-friendly, but I wouldn't say it's great at any one particular thing like I would with the other four places I visited for this write-up. It's a fairly standard run-of-the-mill Chicago pizza at this point, and here's what it looks like...
But because of its fame as the founder of the Chicago style of deep-dishing, it still charges accordingly, placing itself right in the middle of the price wars with these other pizza chains...
So, in conclusion, I guess what I'm trying to say is... when it comes to Chicago pizzas, there really is no correct answer as to which one's better. That's all a matter of taste. There are four parts to a deep-dish pizza and there are four chains that we visited in Chicago that do those four things amazingly, so depending on what you like, just pick the chain that matches – for sauce, Lou Malnati's; for cheese, Giordano's; for toppings, Gino's East; or for crust, Pequod's. Now, if you just want a simple family gathering over a pizza nobody will have a problem with, then maybe heading on down to Uno's would be the best bet for you. Either way, you can't go wrong with Chicago-style pizza!
For those of you who want my Chicago pizza rankings – and again, this doesn't make it fact, just my personal preference – I'd probably rank them as such: (1) Pequod's, (2) Lou Malnati's, (3) Giordano's, (4) Gino's East & (5) Pizzeria Uno. Why did I like Pequod's best? Well, I already mentioned their delicious caramelized crust and their lower pricing, but I also feel like they had just the perfect amount of cheese, sauce and toppings, whereas my other two favorites overdid certain sections of their pizzas. In other words, the fact that Lou Malnati's used too much sauce and that Giordano's used too much cheese dropped them just a hair below Pequod's for me. However, all five of these chains are delicious, so go ahead and start digging in at anyone of them whenever you're ready!
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