Rating Every DEEP DISH Pizza in Chicago (ft. Chef Leo Spizzirri)

GON

GON

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Longer video, almost 30 minutes.

Knowing which pizza was rated best is nice. The best part of the video is the pizza chef's comments. The chef has incredible knowledge of pizza.

Have 30 minutes to kill and have a passion for pizza- this video is a good watch.

 
I'm sure somewhere in my parent's house is the landmark Chicago Magazine article from fifty years ago, where they rated the deep dish pizzas..... The cover photo was a closeup of an toy astronaut standing on the surface of a pizza.

My family always liked the cornbread crust at Gino's... But then as now, in the end we prefer thin pizza.
 
So, I'm a New York Pizza guy (I'm Italian, from Long Island.)

One of the guys in my group at work is in Chicago. We were all out there a few years ago and he took us to his favorite place to get Chicago deep dish. A couple of the guys loved it, a few of us were looking at each other like.....no.

It was all bread.....way too much bread for me.

Each to his own I guess, but it was not good to me at all.
 
My first deep dish pizza was at Gino's East on Superior. I think that it was a Math Club outing when I was in high school. Gino's became a date destination when I was in college. We also went to Gulliver's on Howard, their deep dish was very good as well. It was only later in life that I learned about the South Side places, Connie's, Home Run Inn, etc.

Obligatory BITOG tie-in: our Math Club advisor drove a first generation Firebird with the OHC straight 6. No, I don't know what grade oil he ran in it, sorry.
 
A lot to unpack here. I did not watch 100% of the video, but did see the winner picked and agree.
They did cover it a bit, but when you get into the neighborhoods of the city it's all tavern style. The "deep dish" thing is around and relevant, but it's not the predominant style at all.
They also mentioned "knife and fork" stuff, which is correct. I'm not sure why they insisted on pulling every pizza. It's normally served by spatula and onto your plate. But it was to compare and contrast I guess.
I know it was for the show, but they ordered the Lou's cut. This is a no no. Yes, it has tomato chunks in it, but overall it's a great pizza.
The My Pie stuff was right. Conveyor pizza is trash.
Bertolli's style oven is a thing. They are right. They are huge and have the rotating shelving. You can pretty much walk into them.
Uno crust is outstanding, but the name is becoming irrelevant. They tried the chain restaurant thing and it failed. They probably have 25 spots left when they were well over 100 at some point.
Gino's - Absolute classic. Takes 45 minutes to get your pizza. Sausage is a full 14" patty on a 16" pizza. You get full coverage.
Good find GON. Now I'm hungry. 🍕
 
I'm one of the anomalies that doesn't really have a thing for Gino's. When I worked downtown I preferred the Baccino's on Wacker that was near the office (which, sadly, has closed).
 
SevenBizzos said:
Uno crust is outstanding, but the name is becoming irrelevant. They tried the chain restaurant thing and it failed. They probably have 25 spots left when they were well over 100 at some point.
Click to expand...

I count 40, including the original Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due. Plus a few more international locations.

https://www.unos.com/locations.php

I found myself in Harrah’s Joliet (long story) in the late 90s talking about pizza with a few locals. One said Pizzeria Uno and I really had no idea it was anything other than a franchised (OK but not spectacular) chain that had its origins in Chicago. I’d only heard about the original Uno and Due from various sources like Travel Channel. Apparently the new owners promised that they wouldn’t change anything about the original two restaurants, which aren’t franchises.
 
I love Lous, the crust is amazing and the sauce perfectly balances everything out imo. Not too much toppings on them, otherwise Unos comes in a very close second, pequod third, and Giordano's last. Only reason why Unos isn't on the top of my list is that I can't really get them out in the far SW suburbs.

But tavern style is where it's really at. That's what most of us have, deep dish is just a once-a-blue-moon thing.

I noticed Giordano's DD quality kind of tanked when they went BK, sold, and turned into very touristy DD pizza.
 
y_p_w said:
...I found myself in Harrah’s Joliet (long story) in the late 90s talking about pizza with a few locals. One said Pizzeria Uno and I really had no idea it was anything other than a franchised (OK but not spectacular) chain that had its origins in Chicago. I’d only heard about the original Uno and Due from various sources like Travel Channel. Apparently the new owners promised that they wouldn’t change anything about the original two restaurants, which aren’t franchises.
Click to expand...
A little story from my past - one place I worked had an Uno's reasonably close and they used to do a lunch special where you got a personal pan and a salad in 15 minutes or less, or it was free. I don't remember the price but it was reasonable. And we never got a free lunch.

One time when we were there we noticed the table had a stand-up card advertising their "original" pan pizza, carry-out only, for whatever month it was. My friend asked the server that if they were selling the "original" pizza, what have we been eating all this time? We found out that the franchises were only allowed to sell the same recipe pizza as the corporate store(s) one month a year, and carry-out only. The stuff the franchises normally served was close to the original recipe, but not exactly the same.

I now return you to the original thread, already in progress.
 
opus1 said:
A little story from my past - one place I worked had an Uno's reasonably close and they used to do a lunch special where you got a personal pan and a salad in 15 minutes or less, or it was free. I don't remember the price but it was reasonable. And we never got a free lunch.

One time when we were there we noticed the table had a stand-up card advertising their "original" pan pizza, carry-out only, for whatever month it was. My friend asked the server that if they were selling the "original" pizza, what have we been eating all this time? We found out that the franchises were only allowed to sell the same recipe pizza as the corporate store(s) one month a year, and carry-out only. The stuff the franchises normally served was close to the original recipe, but not exactly the same.

I now return you to the original thread, already in progress.
Click to expand...

I remember the personal pans. They were pretty cheap and something that a poor grad student could afford. Got a free one once when I was sitting there for an hour. But I had a newspaper, nothing all that critical to do, and the manager came by and comped me (plus a gift certificate) after an hour of sitting there. Couldn't figure out what was going on since there were hardly a lot of customers. But I liked it since it was something like $6 for a pizza and soda. Might have been a side salad too? But those were 90s prices.

I suspected that they were previously frozen, but they weren't bad. Not phenomenal though.
 
For more pedestrian pizza reviews, there is "The Report of the Week". Yesterday's review was Pizza Hut and (the video) did not disappoint.

 
Urshurak776 said:
So, I'm a New York Pizza guy (I'm Italian, from Long Island.)

One of the guys in my group at work is in Chicago. We were all out there a few years ago and he took us to his favorite place to get Chicago deep dish. A couple of the guys loved it, a few of us were looking at each other like.....no.

It was all bread.....way too much bread for me.

Each to his own I guess, but it was not good to me at all.
Click to expand...

If your description of it being "all bread" is accurate then it wasn't authentic Chicago deep dish. Authentic Chicago pies have thin L shaped crust thats crisp.

What you had was clearly a deep something - but authentic Chicago style it wasn't.

Many New Yorkers seem surprised, almost aghast to learn that pizza comes in different styles and is actually a regional dish.

Because they don't have access to authentic versions of anything other than thin crust pizza they often don't actually know what each is, or what is and isn't authentic.

Most places dont actually get any version of it right from New York all the way across the country.
 
My weird pizza story involves the original Uno (or possibly Due?) location in Chicago. Sometime back in the 80s, a supposedly genuine Uno deep-dish pizza recipe was making the rounds, either on TV or in the newspaper or magazines. My dad was determined to try making it himself. For best results, the recipe recommended using an authentic cast-iron baking pan and for even better taste try to obtain a pan seasoned with years of use baking pizza. My dad decided to take that literally and so the very next weekend we all headed downtown to eat at Uno's... And my dad informed our server he intended to take home the cast-iron baking pan. Soon enough the maitre-d and eventually one of the bosses appeared at our table damanding to know why we wanted the pan and how much we expected to pay for it. All this time my mother was dying of embarassment. My dad prevalied, however, and we took home a genuine Uno baking pan from the actual original location downtown. If I recall, they charged us something for it, but I've long since forgotten how much (if I ever knew).
 
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