Book proclaimes Chicago as Pizza Capital of USA

[Mike Nolan]

A book by Chicago reporter Steve Dolinsky, who visited 185 pizza places in Chicago and 56 in New York has proclaimed Chicago as the Pizza Capital of the USA.

Hopefully this Washington Post story will come up for most people.

See Pizza

BTW, the best Chicago pizza isn't deep dish, it's tavern style thin crust, or as the author puts it, "Deep dish pizza is to Chicago what Times Square is to New York City."

Going on either a walking or bus pizza crawl in Chicago is likely to go on my 'to do' list.

Link to Book

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[RiversideLen]

While Chicago does have some good deep dish pizza, anybody from Chicago knows that most Chicagoans eat some version of a thin crust. The thin crusts in Chicagoland is pretty diverse too, there is very thin, thin, somewhat thick and thicker. One thing most of them share is that the cheese goes on top of all the other toppings and it's sliced like a checkerboard.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks. This is very timely as I was having a lengthy (and continuing) discussion about this with some colleagues.

Growing up on the south side there were plenty of tavern style pizza places but the only deep dish we knew of was on the north side. We went to Uno's once or twice as a big treat. Another rare treat was going to the Home Run Inn which was near Comiskey.

Giordano's was the first stuffed place I knew about and it arrived in 1973. If stuffed pizza existed we didn't know about it. Then a little later deep dish arrived in Hyde Park in the form of the Medici. The Medici had both tavern style and deep dish but no stuffed. The Medici still exists to this day but in a different location and not nearly as good.

Hyde Park also has a Giordano's and a number of other thin crust take out and bake at home pizza places.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks. This is very timely as I was having a lengthy (and continuing) discussion about this with some colleagues.

Growing up on the south side there were plenty of tavern style pizza places but the only deep dish we knew of was on the north side. We went to Uno's once or twice as a big treat. Another rare treat was going to the Home Run Inn which was near Comiskey.

Giordano's was the first stuffed place I knew about and it arrived in 1973. If stuffed pizza existed we didn't know about it. Then a little later deep dish arrived in Hyde Park in the form of the Medici. The Medici had both tavern style and deep dish but no stuffed. The Medici still exists to this day but in a different location and not nearly as good.

Hyde Park also has a Giordano's and a number of other thin crust take out and bake at home pizza places.

[Mike Nolan]

Deep dish goes back to at least the 60's, because I had it at Gulliver's on Howard when I was at Northwestern, and I was there from 1967 to 1972. But thin crust was both more prevalent and more varied. And that was before the Uno's/Due's pizza war.

I remember going on a LONG car trip with some of my dorm mates from Evanston to a place on the south side (around 66th street) in about 1970, I would have said that was Giordano's but their website says they were founded in 1974. It was a 2-3 hour wait for a table on a Sunday afternoon.

Nancy's claims to have originated stuffed pizza in 1971.

[BakerAunt]

I enjoyed reading the article and the comments. Apparently his claims really miffed the New Yorkers.

[Mike Nolan]

Oh, yeah, few things will tick off New Yorkers as much as being told their pizza isn't the best. (The Yankees losing badly to Boston, like they did last night, comes close, though.)

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