Deep Dish (or Thin Crust) Pizza in Chicago

Deep-dish pizza is nearly synonymous with Chicago. New Yorkers love the New York vs. Chicago pizza fight and visitors love to try it while they're here, but truth be told, a lot of Chicagoans order thin crust far more often than deep dish. I know it sounds like blasphemy, but I actually prefer the thin stuff too.

Chicago has two pizzas of its own, deep dish and tavern-style thin crust, and it now has good versions of everyone else's too. Here's how to tell them apart and where to get each one. Our food and drink guide covers the rest of the city's classics.

Deep dish

Deep dish is baked in a tall pan, with the crust pressed up the sides. The cheese and toppings go in first and the chunky tomato sauce goes on top. It's big and heavy, and one or two slices is a meal. On a cold night, that's the point. Order as soon as you sit down, because a deep dish takes a while to bake.

Wikipedia's history credits Pizzeria Uno, opened in 1943 by Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo, with the first deep dish. Who deserves the credit is still argued over. A 1956 newspaper story named Uno's chef Rudy Malnati as the one who created the recipe, and Alice Mae Redmond, a cook who worked at Uno for years, reworked the dough before taking her recipe to Gino's East. Rudy's son Lou worked at Uno too before opening his own place.

Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due
The original Pizzeria Uno is still at 29 E. Ohio St. in River North and open 11am to 11pm every day. When it ran out of room, Sewell opened Pizzeria Due across the corner in 1955, in the lower level of an old Victorian mansion. The national Uno chain grew out of this place, but the River North pair is where it started. The Grand Red Line stop is a few blocks away.

Gino's East
Two cab drivers and a friend opened Gino's East at 162 E. Superior St. in 1966, a block off the Magnificent Mile. According to Wikipedia, the building was torn down in 2000 and rebuilt, and Gino's moved back in 2006. Customers still write on the walls, a habit that started in the 1970s. There's a South Loop location too.

Lou Malnati's
Lou and Jean Malnati opened the first Lou Malnati's in suburban Lincolnwood in 1971. There are now dozens around the region, including one at 439 N. Wells St. in River North. After Lou died in 1978, Jean and their sons Marc and Rick took over, and for a lot of locals, this is the deep dish.

Giordano's
Giordano's doesn't make deep dish exactly. It makes stuffed pizza, which adds a thin second crust over the cheese before the sauce goes on. Brothers Efren and Joseph Boglio opened it in 1974, based on their mother's Easter pie. It's the easiest of the big names to find, with locations in the Loop, Navy Pier and Oak Park, among others.

Pequod's
Pequod's (2207 N. Clybourn Ave., Lincoln Park) makes a pan pizza with a ring of caramelized cheese around the crust, and it's the one people cross town for. Yelp's users ranked it the best pizza in the country in 2024. It's open until 2am Monday to Saturday and midnight on Sunday, and it takes reservations, which helps. On a weekday, the personal pan lunch special is the cheapest way in.

Tavern-style thin crust

This is what Chicagoans order on a Tuesday night. The crust is rolled thin and bakes up cracker-crisp, and the pizza is cut into squares instead of wedges, which locals call the party cut. The corner pieces go first. The name comes from the bars that served it to keep drinkers around. Both Chicago and Milwaukee claim it, and within Chicago, at least half a dozen places have a case for being first.

Vito & Nick's
Vito & Nick's (8433 S. Pulaski Rd.) may have baked the city's first tavern-style pizza in 1946, when it was still called Vito's Tavern. It's way out on the Southwest Side, it's cash only, and it's dine-in and pickup only, so plan for a drive and bring bills.

Home Run Inn
Home Run Inn started as a tavern in 1923 and has been making tavern-style pizza since 1947. It's another contender for first. It has restaurants on 31st Street in South Lawndale and in Beverly, plus several in the suburbs. If you only know it from the frozen aisle, the restaurant version is better.

Detroit-style

Detroit-style is a rectangular pan pizza with a thick, airy crust. Cheese goes all the way to the edges and fries into a crisp, lacy rim against the pan, and the sauce often goes on last, in stripes. Fans of Pequod's caramelized crust will recognize the idea.

Paulie Gee's Logan Square
Paulie Gee's (2451 N. Milwaukee Ave.) is a Brooklyn transplant that makes wood-fired pies and Detroit-style squares it calls "Logan Squares." Get one of each. It opens at 5pm on weekdays and 11am on weekends, and it's a two-block walk from the Logan Square Blue Line stop.

Neapolitan

Soft, blistered, a little soupy in the middle and baked fast in a very hot oven. It's nothing like either Chicago style, and it's worth a meal if you're here for more than a weekend.

Spacca Napoli
Spacca Napoli (1769 W. Sunnyside Ave., Ravenswood) is the one to know. Jon Goldsmith is a certified pizzaiuolo, the oven was built by artisans from Naples, and the dough is tended daily. Call (773) 878-2420 to reserve. The Montrose Brown Line stop is a short walk away.

And one that's all Chicago
In Pilsen, Bob's Pizza (1659 W. 21st St.) makes what it calls "Pilsen-style" pizza, a 16-inch pie with Old Style beer in the dough, the sturdiness of a New York slice and a puffy Neapolitan edge. It doesn't sell alcohol, so it's on our BYOB list.

Hundreds of neighborhood pizzerias do both deep dish and thin crust, and most Chicagoans have a favorite they'll defend. Not everyone here agrees that deep dish is best, but pretty much everyone agrees that pizza, in whatever form you like, is one of the great things about eating in this city. If you're after other local food, see Chicago's best burgers and Chicago-style hot dogs.

Photo by Josh Bancroft