If you don’t have to fold it over to eat it, it ain’t NY pizza. IMO it’s quite good, but just a shade below the best of Chicago thin-crust.
And as mentioned up-thread, Chicago really has three different styles, with the crackery, square-cut thin crust and its tangy sauce being my personal favorite. In my experience most tourists assume the stuffed is the “native” Chicago pizza, and while I like this gut-bomb occasionally, I can see where it would lose out to the delicious NY style–if only because you can’t eat it on the go or as often. If you visit Chicago and think stuffed or deep-dish is the city’s best, I urge you to get out to D’Agostino’s next time you’re in town.
The best though is from a local mom & pop pizza joint that a friend of mine worked at in college. Every thing made in house and fresh. Every style was available and they had mini pizzas. Perfect for groups of people as you could get several different styles and each person got to have a slice of each of the different styles ordered.
Blogger visits Lou Malnati’s. Note how he says at 0:41 that “deep dish [Chicago-style] pizza has a fairly thin bottom.” The thinness of the crust is pretty evident on the video. I understand Lou Malnati’s was founded by the son of the guy who invented Chicago-style pizza, yes?
Edited to add, for the record: Been to Chicago, ate deep dish pizza there. It was not something I’d care to do again.
There is some contention over who created Chicago-style pizza. Malnati’s is just one type of pie. The Uno’s/Due’s picture I linked to is most certainly not a thin bottom. However, I would not characterize Malnati’s as “thin” either. “Fairly thin” to me sounds like a hedge. “Fairly thin” as compared to what? Pan pizza. Yes, Lou’s is thinner than pan pizza. But it’s not thin crust, or anything that can be described as a “skinny little pie crust” by even the most generous interpretation of terms.
I’m not going to argue whether deep dish is good or not. It’s not my favorite style, as I mentioned above. But I disagree with your characterization of the crust as a “skinny little pie crust.” It simply is not.
(And, BTW, that is part of the reason Malnati’s is my favorite of the deep dish pizzas: it’s not as thick as some of the other versions here in Chicago. Still, not thin.)
Not voting as I’ve never been to Chicago and don’t want to base anything off of trips to Pizzeria Uno. I’m sure it’s delicious, though (and Uno’s certainly not *bad *or anything).
Never heard of that before, but it sounds awesome.
Upon further review, I’m wondering if what you had while you were here was stuffed pizza (like Giordano’s) and not regular deep dish. That would make this comment much more sensical to me.
If I were to have a serious discussion about the merits of various types of pizza and weigh one against the other I would go into detail about all the positive and negative aspects of each giving equal time to all.
In a good natured thread simply titled “NY or CHI pizza?” I will firmly state that there is only one true style of pizza and the rest can go screw.
The national chain of Uno’s is actually just a licensed name from the Chicago Uno’s and the two don’t really share any similarities in quality or ownership or whatever.
I’m from New York, and there are very few things NY doesn’t do best - but pizza is one of them. Champaign Illinois pizza in particular. I went to the U of I, and Papa Del’s pizza in a pan is by far the best pizza I’ve eaten out of many, many samples. When I worked in NJ there were many U of I grads in my lab, and one used to bring back 10 pizzas packed in dry ice for his hungry colleagues. NY pizza is very good but Papa Del’s is exquisite.
