Native Chicagoan here. Something that always gets glossed over is understanding that there's two types of deep dish pizza: stuffed (what you see here) and pan.
Stuffed pizza (from bottom to top) is dough, cheese (plus vegetables or meat or whatever else you wanna "stuff" it with), another layer of dough, then the sauce on top.
Giordano's or Gino's East is most closely associated with stuffed, even though it's often only referred to as "deep dish."
Pan pizza is almost the same in shape/dimensions, but instead of it being stuffed with cheese/vegetables/meat, that part is just bread.
Lou Malnati's is most closely associated with pan pizza, even though it's often only referred to as "deep dish."
The differences are incredibly important, and anyone who's tried both can concur.
Anyways, they both have cheese so idk what this dude talking about lol
Thank you! I like Chicago-style stuffed, but no one on the West Coast knows what it is. Hell, most people anywhere don't know what it is.
For those who have never had it: imagine a two-layer lasagna but the noodles are replaced with a flaky, buttery, yeast-leavened bread. It can be great, but it can also be a big pile of garbage if it's not done right, worse than regular bad pizza.
Pan pizza is almost the same in shape/dimensions, but instead of it being stuffed with cheese/vegetables/meat, that part is just bread.
This makes it sound like pan pizza is dough stuffed with bread, but I'm guessing that's not what you meant to imply? Regardless, I've only had Pequod's and I don't know which kind it was, but I know it was fucking delicious.
Nah it's not stuffed with bread, it's just bread up until you get to the cheese and sauce up top.
And yeah, Pequods is always poppin. Lotta Chicago transplants go for their deep dish, but their thin is better imo. It depends on how you feel about crust, too. Some people really like their crust.
One is basically meat pie without a crust top. The other is just a thick ass piece of bread, often something tasty all its own like sourdough, with pizza toppings on top (think more like putting cheese on bread sticks and calling it pizza). For some reason they are both called deep dish but one is all filling with a thin crust and the other is all bread topped with a pizza.
Rahm Emanuel and Jon Stewart hurt the reputation of the humble Chicago Deep Dish pizza due to some crass comment about skyscrapers. It's a fantastic pie slathered in tomato sauce with a dough base mixed with corn meal giving it a slight crunch and subtle boost to its flavor. I get not everyone likes the unconventional approach to this dish but in my humble opinion it's well worth having once in a while, especially with a pint of beer. I only wish it were a little more common because damn not even LA has more than 3 or 4 joints that offer it and they're all a pain to get to. Just give the pizza a chance people, it's tasty and filling especially if you like your pie saucy.
I'm a relatively recent transplant to Chigacoland so I feel a bit of an instinctive need to defend deep dish. But really, its more of a love for all forms of pizza.
New York style? Hell yes
Chicago style? Two slices and long nap, but still hell yes
Detroit style, tavern style, California style, thin crust, thick crust, stuffed crust? Yes yes yes yes yes and yes!
I'm a native Chicagoan and I just wish people would stop thinking of it is "Chicago style" pizza lol
There's only a handful of restaurants that make it and it's not even their best seller, the way more common "Chicago style" pizza is basically just square cut tavern style.
Deep dish is pretty good but I feel like it's its own category. IMO it's a bad choice for most of the situations you'd order pizza. It's extremely filling so it makes you tired. You have to eat it fast because it's only good hot (and it cools down quick). The slices are heavy so it's harder to eat without making a mess.
Like if I want deep dish, I want deep dish. But if I want pizza, I'm not even considering deep dish, you know? It's like noodle pasta vs lasagna
Ah man, I miss Aurelio's. They used to have a few locations in the Minneapolis/St Paul area, but the last one closed a little while ago. Their pizzas were great, but the spinach calabrese was the best.
There's two types of square cut, and one is fantastic while the other should be punishable by a week in the stockade.
The good way, is starting with a square or rectangle to begin with, and then slicing once down the middle long way, once down the middle short way, and then one down the middle-left and middle-right, for a total of 8 rectangular/square slices. Then you have the corners with more crust, but at least every slice has some crust and some size to it. Most tavern style places will do this one.
The abomination, is to start with a circle, cut a cross into it, and then divvy it up from there like graph paper. The middles get square but with no crust and about the size of a cracker. The edges get at least 4 points that are just crust with about 1cm worth of pizza, and it doesn't get better from there. There's literally 4-8 squares on that whole thing that have enough crust to pizza ratio and they're still the size of a cracker. "It's better for sharing" no it isn't, pizza is already perfect for sharing you just didn't want to order enough. Dominos does their thin crust this way by default (and they fuck up because of muscle memory if you ask for it pie cut like a smart person.)
My one and only encounter with chicago pizza was enough to convince me I hated it. Doesn't mean it's bad though, just definitely not for me. I think it would be better called a casserole than a pizza.
It does get heated up when they put the whole thing in the oven you know. Not disputing your dislike of Chicago style deep dish pizza, love what you love and hate what you hate it's all good. But I don't want anybody to be confused about how hot or cold these pizzas are when you receive them.
Yeah the sauce is put on top to prevent the maillard reaction. In every sense of the word a deep dish is not a typical pizza. But it is still a pizza.
The same can be said for Detroit style pizza. If one wanted to make the same kind of disparagement that people do of deep dish, I could say that Detroit style isn't pizza it's actually cake.
Chicago Style is utter garbage "pizza". If I wanted a mess drenched in pasta and sauce, I'd get a lasagna. I once ordered a deep dish pizza at a bar, and like a civillized sensible human, I assumed it would be that crispy-crusted glory that is Detroit Style deep dish pizza. Not so, it was the vomit-inducing deep Chicago, which looks and tastes the exact same going in as it does coming out.
Detroit >> Chicago, it's not even close. I will fight and die on that hill, as you can actually make a hill out of Detroit style slices! You can only make shitty Agincourt mud out of Chicago-style slop.
It's amazing how pizza was perfected somewhere between 100 and 200 years ago and then every city in America has decided they need to make it worse in innovative and unique ways.
By the gods it's the fucking train of food. Here's perfection now make it more expensive, harder to build, and somehow worse. Quick get Adam Something to make a video on this.
Pizza is actually at least 1000 years old. The thing that identifies it as pizza is the bread not the toppings. And it has actually gotten way better with time.
In the sense that people have been putting stuff on top of flat bread, sure. But that's why I say it was perfected a hundred years or so ago. Because sure you could argue a flatbread with a a herb and cheese spread and some dates is pizza, but it doesn't hold a candle to a modern pizza.
Even if they were born in Italy they are still American, but they are Italian immigrants. Ric Riccardo was a first generation Italian immigrant. Modern Chicago deep dish is likely a modified version of what he served in his pizzeria, but he did still invent it.
I feel like it’s important to me to learn whether the sauce is actually good. I’m terrified that it’s bland. It looks bland. I cannot see any spices or herbs. This is stressing me out more than it should.
This finally made me look for the original, deleted, frustratingly unarchived post. But there are higher resolution pics, and they show herbs n’ ground beef. At least a passable amount of both.
I like thin crust with provel but I usually only have it at bowling alleys, bars, and other high class establishments. Imos is overpriced and can be meh nowadays. At the end of the day it is just local chain pizza.
Most of the actual pizza joints in St Louis have New York style hand tossed crust with mozzarella (and good beer.)
Can you pleas stop calling it a pizza‽ I'm sure it's tasty and all but it's not a pizza. Words have a meaning, or what's next? We gonna call this a cheeseburger?
Words do change meaning but in this instance they shouldn't. Pizza is actively being used for it's original meaning. Chicago deep dish pizza and the fact locust haven't ravaged the city to destruction is proof that there is no god. There is no reason to expand the definition to include that cold disappointing pastaless casserole.
No, I don't know some random pizza from a random hotel in a random town on the other end of the world. But looking at the pictures, I'd say that, albeit not looking very appetizing, it definitely looks much more pizza-like than that Chicago style cheesecake.
But if you ever come to visit, I can recommend a lovely little Italian osteria in the original Altona where you can get great authentic Italian pizza.
Under. The. Sauce.
Look, I try to be a forgiving person, but...
Putting too much sauce on the bottom causes the crust to be soft and undercooked. So if you like a bit more sauce you can put it on top instead.
its essentially just a sauce cheese pie.
There is cheese, but when I want pizza, I don't want a salami casserole
Wearing its sauce on the outside like some kind of whore.
A whore who hates browned cheese.
Native Chicagoan here. Something that always gets glossed over is understanding that there's two types of deep dish pizza: stuffed (what you see here) and pan.
Stuffed pizza (from bottom to top) is dough, cheese (plus vegetables or meat or whatever else you wanna "stuff" it with), another layer of dough, then the sauce on top.
Giordano's or Gino's East is most closely associated with stuffed, even though it's often only referred to as "deep dish."
Pan pizza is almost the same in shape/dimensions, but instead of it being stuffed with cheese/vegetables/meat, that part is just bread.
Lou Malnati's is most closely associated with pan pizza, even though it's often only referred to as "deep dish."
The differences are incredibly important, and anyone who's tried both can concur.
Anyways, they both have cheese so idk what this dude talking about lol
Thanks for comin to my TED Talk.
Thank you! I like Chicago-style stuffed, but no one on the West Coast knows what it is. Hell, most people anywhere don't know what it is.
For those who have never had it: imagine a two-layer lasagna but the noodles are replaced with a flaky, buttery, yeast-leavened bread. It can be great, but it can also be a big pile of garbage if it's not done right, worse than regular bad pizza.
…so a calzona and focaccia?
No, it's a pizza, and if it weren't it would be either of those things either.
It's a sandwich.
This makes it sound like pan pizza is dough stuffed with bread, but I'm guessing that's not what you meant to imply? Regardless, I've only had Pequod's and I don't know which kind it was, but I know it was fucking delicious.
Nah it's not stuffed with bread, it's just bread up until you get to the cheese and sauce up top.
And yeah, Pequods is always poppin. Lotta Chicago transplants go for their deep dish, but their thin is better imo. It depends on how you feel about crust, too. Some people really like their crust.
One is basically meat pie without a crust top. The other is just a thick ass piece of bread, often something tasty all its own like sourdough, with pizza toppings on top (think more like putting cheese on bread sticks and calling it pizza). For some reason they are both called deep dish but one is all filling with a thin crust and the other is all bread topped with a pizza.
Yes, Lou's over Giordano's for that reason. I don't care for marinara sauce, but the extra dough and cheese is great.
Ha, was exactly the first thing I thought of too.
New York Slice forever, baby! Although Detroit style is quite good also.
New York pizza is just above mid. Always has been, always will be. You're just the loudest about it.
Margherita ftw. So simple and delicious
Yes! Someone in this thread who knows actual names of real pizze.
Rahm Emanuel and Jon Stewart hurt the reputation of the humble Chicago Deep Dish pizza due to some crass comment about skyscrapers. It's a fantastic pie slathered in tomato sauce with a dough base mixed with corn meal giving it a slight crunch and subtle boost to its flavor. I get not everyone likes the unconventional approach to this dish but in my humble opinion it's well worth having once in a while, especially with a pint of beer. I only wish it were a little more common because damn not even LA has more than 3 or 4 joints that offer it and they're all a pain to get to. Just give the pizza a chance people, it's tasty and filling especially if you like your pie saucy.
Real deep dish pizza is my favorite type of pizza!
Well, now I want to try it much more
Don't let the haters discourage you. It's worth it.
I'm a relatively recent transplant to Chigacoland so I feel a bit of an instinctive need to defend deep dish. But really, its more of a love for all forms of pizza.
New York style? Hell yes Chicago style? Two slices and long nap, but still hell yes Detroit style, tavern style, California style, thin crust, thick crust, stuffed crust? Yes yes yes yes yes and yes!
I'm a native Chicagoan and I just wish people would stop thinking of it is "Chicago style" pizza lol
There's only a handful of restaurants that make it and it's not even their best seller, the way more common "Chicago style" pizza is basically just square cut tavern style.
Deep dish is pretty good but I feel like it's its own category. IMO it's a bad choice for most of the situations you'd order pizza. It's extremely filling so it makes you tired. You have to eat it fast because it's only good hot (and it cools down quick). The slices are heavy so it's harder to eat without making a mess.
Like if I want deep dish, I want deep dish. But if I want pizza, I'm not even considering deep dish, you know? It's like noodle pasta vs lasagna
Yeah, we just don't have a "signature" pizza in the same way Detroit does.
Italian beef feels like such an accidental secret. It's so good but nobody talks about it outside of Chicago
Ah man, I miss Aurelio's. They used to have a few locations in the Minneapolis/St Paul area, but the last one closed a little while ago. Their pizzas were great, but the spinach calabrese was the best.
I actually just talked to a friend about this last night. He moved to Missouri and he hates all of the pizza there.
yes. and their pies were cheap, we lived on this in the 80s.
Deep dish is delish, it's simply... not pizza.
Tbf square cut is also a travesty. It is the norm where I live, but I have a great Neapolitan joint that knows how to cut triangles.
Incorrect, square cut is great. Definitely my preferred cutting method
Triangles have a natural handle so your fingers don’t get greasy. Squares are smaller and easier to overeat. “Just one more square.”
There's two types of square cut, and one is fantastic while the other should be punishable by a week in the stockade.
The good way, is starting with a square or rectangle to begin with, and then slicing once down the middle long way, once down the middle short way, and then one down the middle-left and middle-right, for a total of 8 rectangular/square slices. Then you have the corners with more crust, but at least every slice has some crust and some size to it. Most tavern style places will do this one.
The abomination, is to start with a circle, cut a cross into it, and then divvy it up from there like graph paper. The middles get square but with no crust and about the size of a cracker. The edges get at least 4 points that are just crust with about 1cm worth of pizza, and it doesn't get better from there. There's literally 4-8 squares on that whole thing that have enough crust to pizza ratio and they're still the size of a cracker. "It's better for sharing" no it isn't, pizza is already perfect for sharing you just didn't want to order enough. Dominos does their thin crust this way by default (and they fuck up because of muscle memory if you ask for it pie cut like a smart person.)
Your fingers definitely do get greasy, lol.
As long as I can get kerf delivered my door in a square cardboard box when I'm too high to drive, I'm here for it.
Napoli?
Did I stutter?
Yes!!
I’d love to know wtf they thought that was
I mean, to be honest they probably knew it was cheese and were just being silly.
That makes me want to ask why the crust is so stretchy!
Chicago!
PVA glue
Glue?
Yep. That's how you get the sauce to stick to the pizza base.
That's what I use to keep my socks from falling down to my ankles.
Was this an ad? Then yes. Is it a crappy phone picture ad? Then maybe. Is this a crappy phone picture of someone's measly deep dish? Then no.
My one and only encounter with chicago pizza was enough to convince me I hated it. Doesn't mean it's bad though, just definitely not for me. I think it would be better called a casserole than a pizza.
It's a no pasta lasagna.
The nature of deep dish pizza aside, doesn't cheeseless pizza predate the kind with cheese anyway?
Yeah, but New Yorkers believe they invented Pizza. Not joking, some very seriously believe that.
This hurts me as an italian
True Italians know that tomatoes don't belong on a pizza.
Oh no! Are people enjoying a food you don't approve of? That sucks for you.
I am referencing the meme that this tweet is referencing.
I don't care if it's under the sauce I still think deep dish pizza is stupid
I don't have a problem with deep dish pizza; just Chicago style deep dish pizza. Not only is the sauce on top, it's marinara sauce and is added cold.
It does get heated up when they put the whole thing in the oven you know. Not disputing your dislike of Chicago style deep dish pizza, love what you love and hate what you hate it's all good. But I don't want anybody to be confused about how hot or cold these pizzas are when you receive them.
The sauce goes on after it comes out of the oven, every time I've seen a recipe for it.
those recipes are by people who don't know fuck all about chicago pizza, ignore them
Wouldn't putting sauce on before putting in the oven prevent the cheese from doing a maillard? That's half the draw of pizza to me, is browned cheese.
most chicago deep dish i've had is in layers for this very reason:
Yeah the sauce is put on top to prevent the maillard reaction. In every sense of the word a deep dish is not a typical pizza. But it is still a pizza.
The same can be said for Detroit style pizza. If one wanted to make the same kind of disparagement that people do of deep dish, I could say that Detroit style isn't pizza it's actually cake.
It's a pie
Yes, a pizza pie.
A torta salata, a pie
Chicago "pizza" is more of a casserole in a sort of bread bowl really.
I mean that's fine I'm not saying it's bad but I am saying it isn't "pizza."
Easily the best pizza I've had in my world travels and by far the cheesiest. A masterful one is a sublime experience.
Chicago Style is utter garbage "pizza". If I wanted a mess drenched in pasta and sauce, I'd get a lasagna. I once ordered a deep dish pizza at a bar, and like a civillized sensible human, I assumed it would be that crispy-crusted glory that is Detroit Style deep dish pizza. Not so, it was the vomit-inducing deep Chicago, which looks and tastes the exact same going in as it does coming out.
Detroit >> Chicago, it's not even close. I will fight and die on that hill, as you can actually make a hill out of Detroit style slices! You can only make shitty Agincourt mud out of Chicago-style slop.
Until you said Detroit I was going to accuse you of being Jon Stewart's posting account ;) very entertaining post, I salute you
Wow, then you are going to absolutely hate Mexican food with a passion.
Ar the end of the day, we're all blood, meat, and bones, but giraffes and humans are different nonetheless. Order matters!
"It's under the sauce"
https://youtube.com/shorts/o6XCp0PwyEc
I was gonna post it if nobody else did.
Yeeeaaaahhh, I'm gonna need this to be the top comment
Mushroom team assemble!
It's amazing how pizza was perfected somewhere between 100 and 200 years ago and then every city in America has decided they need to make it worse in innovative and unique ways.
By the gods it's the fucking train of food. Here's perfection now make it more expensive, harder to build, and somehow worse. Quick get Adam Something to make a video on this.
I mean I agree with you, but it's funnier if talk as if other forms of pizza are an afront to god.
Pizza is actually at least 1000 years old. The thing that identifies it as pizza is the bread not the toppings. And it has actually gotten way better with time.
https://youtu.be/h6XvMKdD2tY
In the sense that people have been putting stuff on top of flat bread, sure. But that's why I say it was perfected a hundred years or so ago. Because sure you could argue a flatbread with a a herb and cheese spread and some dates is pizza, but it doesn't hold a candle to a modern pizza.
Italian immigrants came up with most of those different styles of pizza. You can hate them, but the people who invented them were Italian.
If they are born in America they are American.
Even if they were born in Italy they are still American, but they are Italian immigrants. Ric Riccardo was a first generation Italian immigrant. Modern Chicago deep dish is likely a modified version of what he served in his pizzeria, but he did still invent it.
I feel like it’s important to me to learn whether the sauce is actually good. I’m terrified that it’s bland. It looks bland. I cannot see any spices or herbs. This is stressing me out more than it should.
They are under the plate.
depends on where you go, good places will have a well seasoned marinara. you can also usually see the herbs and spices they've used
This finally made me look for the original, deleted, frustratingly unarchived post. But there are higher resolution pics, and they show herbs n’ ground beef. At least a passable amount of both.
It's a fairly spicy marinara.
Does it have bread, cheese, and sauce? Then I'm going to love eating it, don't really care what you call it
Alright. One layer matzah, one thick layer casu marzu, one layer vegemite. Would you eat the bread, cheese, and sauce?
you mean italian food?
It's cold sauce on top.
I would eat one thousand slabs of Chicago pizza to avoid one bite of St. Louis pizza. WTF is up with that 'cheese'?
I like thin crust with provel but I usually only have it at bowling alleys, bars, and other high class establishments. Imos is overpriced and can be meh nowadays. At the end of the day it is just local chain pizza.
Most of the actual pizza joints in St Louis have New York style hand tossed crust with mozzarella (and good beer.)
Too much cheese and too much sauce. Too messy with the sauce on the outside. There’s a reason normal pizza is more popular.
As a Midwesterner, no such thing.
...I'm fine with just garlic bread, really.
I like my pizza like I like my coffee, with no cheese.
It's under the sauce
That's not a cheese pull, it's a cheese fight.
I'm sorry Chicago but even looking at that has made me lactose intolerant.
Lasagna
I am not huge fan of that style.
It definitely puts the pie in pizza pie
Did you forget?
Can you pleas stop calling it a pizza‽ I'm sure it's tasty and all but it's not a pizza. Words have a meaning, or what's next? We gonna call this a cheeseburger?
words also change meaning, and we changed the shit out of that particular word. Come at us, chitown is always down for a food battle
Words do change meaning but in this instance they shouldn't. Pizza is actively being used for it's original meaning. Chicago deep dish pizza and the fact locust haven't ravaged the city to destruction is proof that there is no god. There is no reason to expand the definition to include that cold disappointing pastaless casserole.
It's tough being at the top, but you get used to it, take that boston
Nah thanks. I'll just stay here and enjoy my cheese burger.
wtf are those gummy worm looking things on the roast beef?
It's jelly, made of stock and the juices arising while roasting the meat. Kind of like a savoury jello.
what is not pizza about it
Counter question: What's pizza about it?
You must not know about Altoona pizza.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altoona-style_pizza
No, I don't know some random pizza from a random hotel in a random town on the other end of the world. But looking at the pictures, I'd say that, albeit not looking very appetizing, it definitely looks much more pizza-like than that Chicago style cheesecake.
But if you ever come to visit, I can recommend a lovely little Italian osteria in the original Altona where you can get great authentic Italian pizza.
Heathens and class traitors every last one of them, I would say burn them at the stake but they would probably enjoy it.
Do you think the people of Chicago made a tragic linguistic mistake and fucked their cuisine instead?
what do you mean?
Rhode Island has entered the chat.
Why?
I had to search for it, but apparently Rhode Island style pizza is a thing.
NJ has tomato pies too (as well as the best pizza on the planet)
Connecticut is the best tho
Boston drivers are agressive.
Rhode Island drivers are ignorant.
Connecticut drivers are fucking selfish.