A Chicago deep-dish is built upside down. The crust, a tall buttery shell pressed up the sides of a round steel pan, goes down first. Then a layer of mozzarella straight against the dough, then sausage or vegetables, and only at the very top a ladle of coarse, barely-cooked tomato. It bakes for 30 to 45 minutes, which is why nobody orders one in a hurry. This is Chicago, the pizza Chicago argues about more than any other.
The style is usually traced to 1943 and a pizzeria called Uno, and the city has spent the eight decades since refining the idea into stuffed pies, caramelized crusts, and buttercrust sausage bombs. Deep-dish is one of 15 pizza styles we map across 360 cities; these are the Chicago spots that earn the wait.
Lou Malnati's, the buttercrust standard
Lou Malnati opened his first pizzeria in 1971. His father, Rudy Malnati, had worked the ovens at Pizzeria Uno, so the recipe traces a direct line back to the origin. The house move is the buttercrust, a flaky, almost pastry-like shell, under a lean sausage patty that covers the whole pie in one sheet instead of loose crumbles. Order The Lou, the spinach and three-cheese pie. Expect a bake of half an hour even after you sit down, so call ahead if you can.
Lou Malnati's Pizzeria
€€€€ · 14,982 reviews
Pizza Lovers say: "The deep-dish pizza, especially 'The Lou', is excellent, rich, cheesy, and flavorful. The buttery crust is a highlight. Expect a considerable 30-minute wait for the pizza."
Giordano's, the stuffed pie
Brothers Efren and Joseph Boglio opened Giordano's in 1974 and built it around their mother's Easter recipe, a stuffed deep-dish: a second thin layer of dough laid over the cheese and under the sauce, so the pie is sealed like a pot pie. The Gold Coast location on Rush Street carries the highest review count of any deep-dish spot on our Chicago map, north of 26,000 on Google. The sign out front calls it Chicago's Famous Stuffed Pizza, and for once the marketing is just describing the build.
Giordano’s
€€€€ · 36,235 reviews
Pizza Lovers say: "Amazing Chicago-style deep dish, crispy calamari. Service can be slow and they might overcharge for extras."
Gino's East, the original since 1966
Gino's East opened in 1966 and bakes its deep-dish in a cornmeal crust that comes out gold and coarse, almost sandy at the edge. The old Superior Street dining rooms were covered wall to ceiling in decades of customer graffiti, part of the ritual of going. At a 4.7 across more than 19,000 reviews it is the highest-rated of the big-name deep-dish institutions.
Gino's East
€€€€ · 22,267 reviews
Pizza Lovers say: "Deep-dish pizza and garlic bread are incredible, with an awesome atmosphere and affordable prices. However, some found the thin crust to be mediocre."
Pequod's, the caramelized crown
Burt Katz, who later opened Burt's Place up in Morton Grove, founded Pequod's, and its signature is the caramelized cheese crown: mozzarella pushed against the pan edge so it fuses and burns into a ring of lacquered, bittersweet crust. It sits on Clybourn in Lincoln Park, it undercuts the tourist-facing names on price (a single dollar sign on our map), and that pan-edge ring is the most imitated single detail in Chicago pizza. More than 16,000 reviews and counting.
Pequod's Pizza
€€€€ · 17,381 reviews
Pizza Lovers say: "The caramelized crust is legendary and the toppings are plentiful. Some found it dry and lacking cheese."
Pizzeria Uno, where the argument starts
Ike Sewell opened Pizzeria Uno in 1943, and most histories credit that kitchen with inventing the deep-dish. Whether it was Sewell or his cook Rudy Malnati who first pressed the dough up the pan is a fight Chicago will never settle, which is half the fun of ordering here. The pie is still a benchmark: tall, saucy, slow, more than 6,500 reviews deep.
Pizzeria Uno
€€€€ · 8,689 reviews
Pizza Lovers say: "Amazing BBQ Chicken deep-dish with a buttery crust, but some find the pizza too saucy and the wait time long."
Order early, and split one between two people, because a deep-dish is heavier than it looks and a whole pie defeats most tables. We ranked these by what people who came for the pizza actually thought, not by the length of the line on a Saturday night.