Finding the Best Deep Dish Pizza in Chicago

Finding the best deep dish pizza in Chicago

Before visiting the Windy city for the first time, I had no idea that Chicago is somehow a paradise for food lovers. And one of the most famous dishes that you can try there, is the deep dish pizza. But what exactly makes the Chicago - style deep dish pizza different from your regular pizza? The answer is the thickness of the pizza crust and the extensiveness of the toppings used!

It is way thicker than the crust in regular pizza, and it somehow creates a bowl where they put the toppings. Since deep dish pizzas are loaded with various toppings, they take a long time to bake. I was pretty surprised when the server told us that the baking time is forty five minutes! But it is well worth the wait, because during that time, the best pizza you will ever have, will be baking.

I stayed in Chicago for three days with two of my best friends who visited me last autumn. And our bucket list for Chicago included finding the best deep dish pizza in the city. Before the trip, we searched for best deep dish pizza in Chicago on Yelp, which is pretty reliable, and we soon found a few places that guests declared to have 'the be best deep dish pizza in town'. After trying them all out, these were the results.

Lou Malnati’s deep dish pizza is supposedly the best deep dish pizza place in Chicago (and therefore worldwide), and after trying it, I cannot say I disagree with that opinion. Lou Malnati’s pizzeria has two different locations in Chicago, and if you are planning to eat lunch or dinner there during regular hours, you should strongly consider making a reservation. If not, you will wait for a table over an hour, plus additional forty five minutes for the pizza to bake.

But what makes Lou Malnati’s deep dish pizza so special? Apparently it is a secret recipe, and they use fresh toppings every day. On their menu, you will find six deep dish pizza variations, including a vegetarian one, which is delicious, and regular pizzas as well. But do not order regular pizza. You can eat it anywhere. Go for the deep dish pizza instead.

This is how our deep dish pizza looked like. It is smaller than a regular pizza, but think of the thick trust and all the toppings - I was full after eating just one slice. And the price for this tiny piece of deliciousness? Nineteen dollars! But let me tell you this - I was never happier to spend nineteen dollars on food.

Giordano’s deep dish pizza with stuffed crust

Pizza with stuffed crust? Yummy! Deep dish pizza with stuffed crust? Yummy overload! I have tried regular pizza with stuffed crust before - it was during my Erasmus semester in Lisbon, and it was at Pizza Hut. I remember not liking it as much as I thought I would, but since that happened quite a few years ago, I decided to give Giordano’s stuffed crust pizza a try.

At Giordano’s, you can pick one of the deep dish pizza options on the menu, or you can create your own. Which will, obviously, cost you more, but why not experiment a little? You can also pick your stuffing for the crust. At Giordano’s, it took our deep dish pizza almost one hour to be ready, and what I really loved during the waiting, is that our server kept coming back with updates and funny remarks about our pizza.

If you do not feel like waiting for one hour for the deep dish pizza by your choice, Giordano’s also offers pre - prepared, mini deep dish pizzas that are ready in as fast as fifteen minutes. You sadly cannot choose the toppings - you get cheese, tomatoes and artichoke hearts, but I think deep dish pizza is delicious, regardless on the toppings. These mini deep dish pizzas are ready in fifteen minutes, and even though they are tiny, they are extremely filling. This is probably the smallest pizza I have ever seen, but do not judge the book by its cover - it will make you full.

This tiny pizza actually looks big on the picture - but this is a small plate!

Deep dish pizza in random pizza joints across town

On our last night in Chicago, me and my two friends decided to go to Lou Malnati’s pizzeria again, just because we loved the pizza there so much, but we did not make a reservation beforehand. And when we got there, the line to enter the restaurant literally went around the block, meaning the wait for a table was one hour and a half. Since we were all pretty much starving from walking through the Windy city all day, we decided to keep walking and just grab a slice of pizza at the next pizza joint we see.

To be honest, I forgot the name of the place, but it is situated on the same street as Lou Malnati’s pizzeria, just three blocks away, and the windows are filled with neon signs. The place was empty, and they allowed us to build a custom deep dish pizza. And we did. We used three different kinds of cheese, tomatoes, peppers, and a lot of artichoke hearts.

After nearly an hour, we were presented with this monster. And it was monstrously delicious. And, needless to say, the three of us were barely able to finish it.

Deep dish pizza outside Chicago

There are some restaurants all across the United states that make deep dish pizzas, but they are not the ‘real’ Chicago deep dish pizzas. Well, Giordano’s is a chain and it has locations across the United states of America, but, in my opinion, it is not the real deep dish pizza if you do not eat it in Chicago. And while walking past one of the Giordano’s locations in Chicago, I noticed a flyer that says they ship a deep dish pizza nationwide!

The restaurant closest to me where I can get the deep dish pizza, is called BJ’s brewery, and their pizzas are pretty good. You can get them in three sizes, and they come generously loaded with toppings.

A few words for the end…

Everybody loves pizza, ad in my short life, I probably ate much more pizza than an average person. But I have never tried a deep dish pizza before visiting Chicago. And once I took the first bite of it, I started to rethink the meaning of pizza. You will understand what I am talking about once you try it for yourself.

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