Chicago is famous for deep dish, but locals barely eat it. The everyday pizza in Chicago is tavern-style: thin, cracker-crisp, cut into squares, ordered by the half-sheet for a Bears game or a kid's birthday. Visitors get one deep dish meal, locals get tavern by the square, and a quieter wood-fired Neapolitan scene has been building since 2006.
If you have three meals in town, spend them on three different pies. Treat deep dish like a museum visit (one is plenty), order a tavern thin like you live here, and book a wood-fired pizzeria to see how Chicago handles a 60-second pizza. Anything you can get from Domino's does not count.
What is Chicago deep dish, actually?
Deep dish was born in 1943 at Pizzeria Uno on the corner of Ohio and Wabash, opened by Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo. A 1956 Chicago Daily News article credits the recipe to their cook, Rudy Malnati Sr. The idea was a pizza that ate like a meal: a tall buttered crust pressed up the side of a seasoned steel pan, sliced low-moisture mozzarella laid directly on the dough so the cheese does not burn, sausage or vegetables in the middle, crushed tomatoes on top, a dusting of grana. It bakes for half an hour. The cheese goes under the sauce so it does not burn in a bake that long.
The Chicago family tree branches from there. Rudy's son Lou Malnati made deep dish with his father from the 1940s and opened his own place in Lincolnwood in 1971. Lou's half-brother, Rudy Malnati Jr., opened Pizano's in 1991. Pequod's tilts the recipe sideways with a ring of cheese pushed against the hot pan wall, which caramelizes into a dark, brittle collar around the rim. Gino's East colors its crust yellow with cornmeal. Same continent, different countries.
| Style | Crust profile | Cheese position | Bake time | Where to try |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deep dish (classic) | Tall, buttery, pressed into high-sided pan | Under sauce on dough | 30 to 45 minutes | Lou Malnati's, Gino's East, Pizzeria Uno |
| Deep dish (Pequod's) | Medium-deep, chewier than the canon | Caramelized ring against pan edge | 30 to 45 minutes | Pequod's Pizza |
| Tavern-style thin | Cracker-crisp, rolled thin, squared cut | Edge to edge, no soggy center | 12 to 15 minutes | Bartoli's Pizzeria, The Art of Pizza |
| Neapolitan (AVPN) | Soft cornicione, spotted leopard crust | On top of the sauce | 60 to 90 seconds | Spacca Napoli, Coda di Volpe |
The deep dish canon
If you only do one deep dish meal in Chicago, Pequod's is the one that converts skeptics. Burt Katz opened the original in Morton Grove in 1971, after years of pan pizza at his Evanston place, The Inferno. He sold it in the mid-1980s to Keith Jackson, who later opened the Lincoln Park location on Clybourn Avenue. The signature move is the caramelized cheese ring: mozzarella pressed against the pan edge so it browns into a dark, crunchy crust collar that tastes like the bottom of a frico. The pan pie itself is medium-deep, not the tower style, with a chewier crust than the household names.
Pequod's Pizza
€€€€ · 17,388 reviews
The caramelized crust is legendary and the toppings are plentiful. Some found it dry and lacking cheese.
Lou Malnati's is the household name version of deep dish, and that is not a knock. Lou and his wife Jean opened the first one in Lincolnwood on 17 March 1971, and his sons Marc and Rick kept the butter crust honest across sixty-plus locations. The dough has real flake to it, the sausage is a thick patty that covers the whole pie rather than crumbled bits, and they still hand-press the dough into the pan. Order the Malnati Chicago Classic with their lean sausage and chunky tomato.
Lou Malnati's Pizzeria
€€€€ · 14,989 reviews
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.
Gino's East opened in 1966, started by two cab drivers, Sam Levine and Fred Bartoli, and their friend George Loverde. The defining detail is yellow cornmeal in the crust, which gives the bottom a gritty bite that holds up to the sauce sitting on top for thirty minutes in the oven. The original restaurant on Superior Street closed in 2000 and the flagship moved to Wells Street, but the graffiti tradition followed: every flat surface inside is signed in Sharpie by visitors who came once and will come again.
Gino's East
€€€€ · 22,295 reviews
Deep-dish pizza and garlic bread are incredible, with an awesome atmosphere and affordable prices. However, some found the thin crust to be mediocre.
For the origin pilgrimage, Pizzeria Uno still operates at the corner of Ohio and Wabash, where it opened in 1943. The recipe has been copied so many times that eating it at the source feels like reading the original draft of a famous book. The crust is shorter than Pequod's and less buttery than Malnati's, the sausage is finer, the dining room is wood-paneled and tight. Worth the wait once.
Pizzeria Uno
€€€€ · 8,700 reviews
Great BBQ Chicken deep-dish with a buttery crust, but some find the pizza too saucy and the wait time long.
Pizano's is where you go when half your table wants deep dish and the other half wants tavern thin. Rudy Malnati Jr., son of the Uno cook Rudy Malnati Sr., opened it on State Street in 1991, and the family still runs it. The thin-crust here is the cleaner argument for what Chicago thin actually is: a buttery, crackly disk cut into squares, sausage edge to edge, no soggy center.
Pizano's Pizza
€€€€ · 5,662 reviews
The deep-dish crust is on point and toppings are fresh. The Woo Woo cocktail is tasty. Service can be slow.
Labriola is baker Rich Labriola's restaurant on North Michigan Avenue, and it is the deep dish spot a non-deep-dish person ends up enjoying. He came to pizza from bread, and it shows: the pan dough is light and focaccia-like rather than dense, with a caramelized cheese edge.
Labriola
€€€€ · 5,706 reviews
Great Chicago-style pizza with tons of cheese & ingredients, delicious meatballs, and great thin-crust pepperoni. Service can be slow.
The tavern style nobody tells visitors about
Tavern-cut thin is what Chicago actually eats. Cracker-thin dough rolled (not stretched), low-moisture cheese, sausage and giardiniera, baked hot until the bottom snaps when you fold a square. It is cut into rectangles called party cut so a table of six can take a corner each. The cheese pulls in strings off the crispy bottom, the sauce is sweet, the slice you grab from the middle of the tray has no crust at all. That is the point.
Bartoli's Pizzeria in Roscoe Village is one of the cleanest tavern thins in town. Brian Tondryk opened it in 2014 and named it for his grandfather, Fred Bartoli, one of the founders of Gino's East. The thin crust is the draw: a dough rolled thin enough to read a menu through, a tangy sauce, a generous hand with the giardiniera. He also runs a respectable deep dish on the same menu.
Bartoli's Pizzeria
€€€€ · 1,080 reviews
A Chicago institution serving deep dish and thin crust pizza since 1956. The deep dish features a caramelized crust edge and generous toppings; takeout and delivery are popular options for locals.
The Art of Pizza on Ashland Avenue in Lakeview is the lunch slice nobody mentions in travel guides. The move is a stuffed slice from the case at the counter, already baked, so you skip the 45-minute wait a whole stuffed pie takes. The crust holds a heavy slice better than it has any right to.
The Art of Pizza
€€€€ · 2,352 reviews
Great stuffed pizza slices, great sauce and crust. Some find it not fresh or too bready.
The wood-fired Neapolitan scene
Chicago has been quietly doing serious Neapolitan pizza since 2006, when Jonathan Goldsmith opened Spacca Napoli in Ravenswood after training in Naples. The pizzeria is certified by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN), which means the dough, the flour, the oven temperature, and the cooking time all clear the standard set in Campania. The crust is a leopard-spotted cornicione with the soft, wet center that Italian pizzaioli call scioglievole. It is the reference point in the city.
Spacca Napoli
€€€€ · 3,659 reviews
Outstanding Neapolitan pizza with fresh flavors and quality ingredients, especially the Margherita and Pistachio Pesto. Reservations are recommended for evenings.
Coda di Volpe on Southport Avenue in Lakeview is the answer to the question of whether Chicago does 60-second Neapolitan pies as seriously as it does pan pizza. The pizzas come out of a Stefano Ferrara wood oven, the menu leans Campania and Calabria, and the restaurant is built for a long Italian dinner rather than a slice grab. A defense exhibit for any visitor who arrives convinced this is a one-style town.
Coda di Volpe
€€€€ · 2,007 reviews
The focaccia with ricotta and margherita pizza with sausage are highlights. The gluten-free focaccia pizza was enjoyed. Service was attentive, though sometimes drinks sat empty.
Forno Rosso brought Nick Nitti's Neapolitan to Harlem Avenue first and then added a second wood oven on Randolph Street in the West Loop. The Randolph location is the easier add-on to a downtown stay. The Margherita DOP is the order, and the Diavola earns its name with a real Calabrian chili kick.
Forno Rosso (Randolph St.)
€€€€ · 1,966 reviews
Traditional wood-fired dough, fresh ingredients, and excellent wine selection. Some pizzas can be a bit wet or dry, and vegetarian options are limited.
Paulie Gee's Logan Square is the Brooklyn offshoot that argues you can move a wood-fired pizza style across state lines without watering it down. The Hellboy with soppressata, mozzarella, parmigiano, tomato, and a finishing drizzle of Mike's Hot Honey is the move that built the original's reputation in Greenpoint, and the Logan Square shop runs it the same way. It is the closest Chicago gets to a New York slice argument in a wood oven. If you want a deep dive into how other American cities approach pizza, check out our guide to Brooklyn's legendary pizza scene.
How this list was put together
We ranked these spots on what people who came for the pizza actually said about the pizza. Long lines and high star counts get distorted by tour buses and parking complaints, so we weighted those down. A small pizzeria with a regular crowd and a pizzaiolo whose name we can spell beats a forty-table tourist factory every time. Eat one deep dish, one tavern thin, one wood-fired. Then come back and argue about the order.
