Chicago · a Restaurant Pro list
Chicago pizza, all of it
Deep dish, pan, stuffed, tavern thin and the coal oven. Fourteen pies, five styles.
Chicago did not invent one pizza; it invented four and imported a fifth. The tourists queue for deep dish, the locals cut tavern thin into squares, and the argument about which is the real one has outlived everyone who started it. This list is the whole argument.
- 1
Pizza · Lincolnwood · ★ 4.5 (3,552)
The first Lou Malnati's, opened in 1971 by the son of the man who ran the kitchen at Pizzeria Uno.
Order: The Lou, spinach and tomato on the buttercrust
- 2
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.4 (16,808)
The caramelized-cheese crust that made pan pizza its own category. The original is in Morton Grove; this is the Lincoln Park room everyone knows.
Order: Pan pizza, sausage, caramelized edge
- 3
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.4 (16,059)
Stuffed pizza: a second layer of dough over the cheese, sauce on top. Giordano's has been the name for it since 1974.
Order: The stuffed, with spinach
- 4
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.4 (3,259)
The South Side thin crust Chicagoans actually eat most weeks. Cracker-thin, party cut, cash only, no delivery — since 1946.
Order: Tavern thin, sausage, cut in squares
- 5
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.4 (2,284)
A neighbourhood stuffed-pizza counter that keeps winning the local polls against the famous names.
Order: A stuffed slice, by the slice
- 6
Italian · Chicago · ★ 4.7 (3,346)
Wood-fired Neapolitan in Ravenswood from an oven built by Neapolitans. Ninety seconds in the fire.
Order: The Margherita, blistered
- 7
- 8
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.5 (695)
A Roscoe Village deep dish from a family with a Malnati in the tree. Less butter, more crumb.
Order: Deep dish, sausage and giardiniera
- 9
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.6 (61)
A pandemic pop-up that became Uptown's own pan pizza — the caramelized rim, thicker and more sour.
Order: The pan, with the burnt edge
- 10
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.5 (1,101)
Lincoln Park's thin-crust standard since 1950, the crust that snaps.
Order: Thin crust, sausage and mushroom
- 11
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.5 (2,891)
New Haven style in Wicker Park, from a brewery that has won more medals than it has taps.
Order: The white pie with clams
- 12
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.5 (3,051)
Streeterville's own style, worked out over years of Friday-night pies at home: a crust with a snap that fits no Chicago category, which is the point.
Order: The Rita — burrata, basil, a drizzle of honey
- 13
Pizza · Morton Grove · ★ 4.6 (1,078)
Burt Katz's pan pizza, from the man who started Pequod's and then started over. Order ahead; they bake to the reservations.
Order: Whatever pan pizza they have left
- 14
Pizza · Chicago · ★ 4.7 (387)
A Rogers Park counter run by a pizza obsessive, with deep dish and Detroit red-tops by the slice.
Order: A deep dish slice with a Detroit-style corner
