This gave me some quandary until I returned to the root of the issue. If I learned one thing from my pre-pie research it’s that everyone has an opinion and Chicago is not short on great pizza parlours to choose from. There were the original pizza places, the ‘most popular’, the ‘with a twist’, the ‘craft-creators’ and the ‘urban trendy’s’. Obviously, I turned to the internet, where I quickly drowned in lists of top 5’s, top 10’s and even a top 50. Still, choosing where to try the deep pan was a challenge all in itself.

The third was a mistake from start to finish (that’s what I get for trying to add a non-Chicago-style pizza into the comparison) so I won’t be mentioning it here, and you’ll thank me for that. The first two served the classic Chicago-style pizza that has become one of the city’s icons. In my quest to discover the best deep dish pizza in Chicago, I managed to visit three pizza joints. Where is the best deep dish pizza in Chicago?Ĭhoosing a deep dish pizza place in Chicago I’d rather pick another slice of pizza so I’m going to leave both their names on the ‘made by’ label. The internet will give you whichever answer you want, if you choose to pick a side. * there’s been a significant spat between the brother’s as to which of them created the Chicago deep pan pizza. He* created a recipe that combined authentic Italian spices and quality tomatoes with more cheese than people could believe and then baked it for nearly an hour.” ( Uno’s website)Īnd ‘ with more cheese than people could believe‘ how could they not? With a “Buttery ‘out-of-this-world’ crust that had a tall edge like a fruit pie. And they bought their native flavours and recipe books with them.ĭecades later, in 1943, brothers Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo decided to set up a new restaurant called Uno’s where they recrafted the original thin crust pizza recipe to create a new style of pizza “ unlike any that had been served before.” Since before the turn of the 19th century, Neapolitan immigrants had been crossing the Atlantic from Italy in search of work. This sets it apart from most other pizzas around the globe where you typically get a flat bread which is topped with a thin spread of tomato pizza sauce, cheese, meats and vegetables.Īs for Chicago’s claim to deep dish pizza fame, the story and the dish came about courtesy of two brothers. The crust sits at the bottom and the depth is filled with cheese, crushed tomato, meats and vegetables. Chicago and pizza boundįor the uninitiated, Chicago-style pizza is created in a deep pan and is more similar in style to a pie. I had to share this – this is what JFK looks like when you stay at the airport all night and take the first flight out. What is deep dish pizza (and why is it famous in Chicago)? What to do in Chicago – eat deep dish pizza, of courseĬracking open the cloud and searching for the glorious silver-lining, I remembered that jet-lag leaves me craving carbs and Italy had provided a residual hankering for pizza.Īnd the solution to both of these urges surrounded me in Chicago, one of the most famous pizza cities on earth.Ĭonsequently, for the first few days in Chicago as I fought my bones out of bed and onto the city streets, I did one of the best activities anyone can do in the windy city (apart from keep their long hair safely tied back), I ate deep dish pizza. Not sure which way was up, I arrived in Chicago on a crisp October morning, craving a week in bed…during the only week I had to explore the city. I’d zig-zagged across the Atlantic twice in two weeks with stops in London, Istanbul, Bologna and New York. To say I was jet-lagged when I stepped off the plane at O’Hare airport would be a vast understatement.

Pizzeria uno chicago