🌎 Local pizza expert Steve Dolinsky wants you to know that Chicago pizza isn't just deep dish. Just in time for Lollapalooza Chicago 2025, here are his favourite pies in the city.
Outside Chicago, the term "Chicago-style pizza" is invariably associated with the deep-dish pie that's often mocked by out-of-towners as "lasagna in a bread bowl". But true Chicagoans know that the city and its suburbs are actually home to three iconic styles of pizza: deep-dish, stuffed and Chicago thin – AKA: "tavern style".
As visitors prepare to flock to the city for the 25th edition of Lollapalooza, a massive annual four-day music festival expected to draw 100,000 people per day, they'll find plenty of opportunities to experience what is arguably Chicago's most famous culinary offering in all its forms. We tapped renowned local food reporter Steve Dolinsky for his expert take.
"People think Chicago is all deep-dish and was invented by the Uno's guys," says Dolinsky, who published Pizza City, USA in 2018, documenting all of the region's delicious styles. "But there's so much more to it."
The story of Chicago pizza doesn't start with a deep dish, but with a tavern. In the 1940s, when men habitually popped into bars after work, "bartenders realised that by serving a salty snack, they'd sell more beer," says Dolinsky, whose book led to a Pizza City podcast, Pizza City tours and the wildly popular Pizza City Fest; landing this year in Chicago from 22 - 24 August. "With the advent of gas ovens, they started making thin-crust pies, which they'd cut into squares and pass around the bar on cocktail napkins for free."
Then, in 1943, when Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo opened a bar in Chicago's busy River North area, Riccardo used cake pans inherited from the bar's previous occupant to develop a deep-dish pizza, leading the duo to open The Pizzeria (later renamed Pizzeria Uno). "Unlike its thin-crust predecessor, this dough was pressed into a pan," explains Dolinsky. "They topped it with cheese to protect the dough, then added toppings and a chunky tomato sauce."
Fast forward to 1971 and Rocco Palese's invention of the stuffed pizza at Nancy's; purportedly inspired by his mother's pizza rustica (Italian stuffed savoury pie).
"All visitors and most locals still don't understand stuffed is a sub-category of deep-dish," says Dolinsky. "It bears little resemblance to a classic deep-dish or even a deep-pan pizza, due to that thin second layer of dough. Fortunately, we have so many other styles of pizza here, you don’t have to rely on just one.”
Here are Dolinsky's favourite pizzas in Chicago.
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