New Yorkers Talking Trash About Chicago Pizza

These are fightin' words if you ask me.

Don't these people know that true Chicago pizza is THIN (Vito&Nick's, CandleLight, Marie's, etc.)

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2 ... rkers.html

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2 ... goans.html

Can't people just love all types of pizza? I know I do.

I agree! I always say that Deep dish or stuffed is for the tourist. I am of Italian desent and grew up in Melrose Park, and we always ate thin crust. Grandma used to make a thicker crust for homemade pizza but was more just light cheese and sauce, never any Sausage. And Grandma was Sicilian. They act like we dont even know about thin crust here in Chicago.
Always makes me laugh when they try to pit New York against Chicago with pizza.
Joey B

I notice NR706 attempts to inject some reason into discussion.

Maybe it's the eternally sunny optimist that I am, but I thought they were sort of making fun of the extremist New Yorker's horror at Chicago pizza.

David Hammond wrote:I notice NR706 attempts to inject some reason into discussion.

Yeah, had too much time on my hands.

I agree with JoeyB,

For me Chicago pizza, and the pizza I grew up with was thin crust, with sausage, and mushroom. I find the tourists think of deep, or stuffed pizza as "Chicago Style" I do not.

Clearly, a lot of tourists flock to the downtown pizza establishments for deep dish and stuffed pizza.

But since you can get deep dish and stuffed pizza throughout the city and suburbs, in areas not generally known as attracting tourists, and have been able to for a very long time, it seems strange to label these as food for tourists. It's also strange that something could become a tourist attraction without any solid following among locals.

Besides does it really matter if everyone agrees on what constitutes some mythical "true Chicago pizza"?

Darren72 wrote:Clearly, a lot of tourists flock to the downtown pizza establishments for deep dish and stuffed pizza.

But since you can get deep dish and stuffed pizza throughout the city and suburbs, in areas not generally known as attracting tourists, and have been able to for a very long time, it seems strange to label these as food for tourists.

I would agree. I eat plenty of thin crust, but I get the craving for a good Burt's or Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza often enough that I would classify both thin and thick as being pretty mainstream.

Darren72 wrote:But since you can get deep dish and stuffed pizza throughout the city and suburbs, in areas not generally known as attracting tourists, and have been able to for a very long time, it seems strange to label these as food for tourists. It's also strange that something could become a tourist attraction without any solid following among locals.

Oh, certainly, deep dish is not just pizza for tourists. But I think the default pizza, for most Chicagoans, is thin crust. Tourists are more apt to think of deep dish as the pizza Chicagoans eat on a regular basis which, from my experience at any rate, is not true. As I've said in another thread, I've lived in Chicago proper the first twenty one years of my life, and I didn't even have a deep-dish pizza until well into high school. And that's because they opened a Giordano's near here. And, yes, I know, that's stuffed. If you want plain deep-dish, it was either my freshman or sophomore year of college that I finally stepped into Gino's East.

Phil wrote:These are fightin' words if you ask me.

Don't these people know that true Chicago pizza is THIN (Vito&Nick's, CandleLite, Marie's, etc.)

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2 ... rkers.html

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2 ... goans.html

LTH get's a shout out

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2 ... icago.html

You know, one thing I was thinking that is a pretty strong sign: there are thin pizza-only places all around town, and especially on the north side there are lots of thin and thick pizza places (they seem rarer on the south side), but I think the ONLY place that is thick crust only is Pizzeria Uno/Due. I suppose there are others (Chicago Oven Grinder maybe?) but basically, nearly every thick place also offers thin, but many thin places don't offer thick, which tells you what the real majority pizza in town is.

Another aspect of this deep dish issue is that a lot of the places that make deep dish do it very badly. My sister had friends visiting from New Orleans and they went to a pizza place in Elkhorn Wisconsin and they had Chicago Style deep dish on the menu, So one of the visitors wanted to try it, and ordered it. It was awful, a 1 inch thick tough bready crust that dwarfed the toppings. I'm sure he went back to New Orleans reportng how bad Chicago Style Pizza was.

A friend of mine had a similar experience at a restaurant not known for their deep dish and now absolutely refuses to try it again, no matter how many times I tell him that the good ones are not made that way, and how the crust on a good deep dish is not very thick at all, and that it's the toppings that are thick, ...etc. I finally got him to go to Malnati's, but he still only orders the thin crust. I'm not giving up on getting him to at least try a well made deep dish. Being a meat lover, I know he'd love the layer of sausage on Malnati's deep dish.

imsscott wrote:Another aspect of this deep dish issue is that a lot of the places that make deep dish do it very badly.

That's all too common with many foods, I'd think. People have an ersatz version and damn the whole category based on one experience with a poor example. For instance, I didn't know how much I liked Munster cheese until I had the real thing, as is being discussed elsewhere: http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16188

I'll line up for my paddling now in that about a month ago I was accosted by a gaggle of young ladies outside the Palmer House hotel and they asked where to get pizza. I was *this* close to sending them to Spacca Napoli or Coalfire or even My Pie but they were angling for deep dish and someplace in the Loop so I reluctantly pointed them to Uno/Due

In hindsight, I should have offered to accompany them to SN or CF but I had to get to the Art Institute to see the Jeff Wall exhibit on its last day

tem wrote:I was accosted by a gaggle of young ladies outside the Palmer House hotel and they asked where to get pizza.

On a related note, I was asked recently where to get good non-deep dish within walking distance of the Palmer House. Best I could come up wtih was Follia. What am I missing?

Pizano's. Aurelio's (though I would not send a tourist to the bleak South Loop motel housing the pizza parlor).

Aaron Deacon wrote:

tem wrote:I was accosted by a gaggle of young ladies outside the Palmer House hotel and they asked where to get pizza.

On a related note, I was asked recently where to get good non-deep dish within walking distance of the Palmer House. Best I could come up wtih was Follia. What am I missing?

I would definitely second Pizanos for thin crust.

tem wrote:I'll line up for my paddling now in that about a month ago I was accosted by a gaggle of young ladies outside the Palmer House hotel and they asked where to get pizza. I was *this* close to sending them to Spacca Napoli or Coalfire or even My Pie but they were angling for deep dish and someplace in the Loop so I reluctantly pointed them to Uno/Due

You don't deserve a paddling of any sort. If they wanted deep dish, you did well sending them to Uno/Due. It's a great example of the classic style. I say, give 'em what they ask for. There's that, and the fact that some people simply don't like the Neapolitan or East Coast style exemplified by Spacca Napoli or Coalfire. Why give them something other than what they asked for?

Binko wrote:Oh, certainly, deep dish is not just pizza for tourists. But I think the default pizza, for most Chicagoans, is thin crust. Tourists are more apt to think of deep dish as the pizza Chicagoans eat on a regular basis which, from my experience at any rate, is not true.

That's true for this Chicagoan. What we most often get delivered or pick up or take out of the freezer (yes, we do) or make ourselves is thin crust. But once in a while we just really, really want a deep dish sausage Malnati's for dinner. For local family get-togethers, we probably are 50-50 on thin-thick. For visiting family out-of-towners, we probably are more likely to get thick (Malnati's), because we figure it'll be a special treat for them because they aren't able to get it where they live. I have also sent Malnati's pizzas as Christmas presents to relatives who lived out of town.

It's just New Yorker insecurity I wouldn't worry too much about it- it's everywhere in DC too.

The most intelligent thing my high-school ex ever said was “flajammas”. Flajammas.

He paraded around his parent’s black and white checkered kitchen floors in that spastic, somewhat uncomfortable, energized manner he always had in his home, especially in his kitchen. It was late at night, and early in our relationship. We had probably just come downstairs from one of our many lengthy sessions of lying on his terribly uncomfortable bed, with his tongue far deeper into my mouth than anyone could possibly consider pleasurable. Before he drove me home, to my house thirty minutes away where my parents awaited my arrival, he insisted that he have something to eat.

“Flajammas. Well I can’t call them scrambled eggs—they’re so far from it.” He offered me a plate of brown, overcooked, unseasoned eggs that he had removed from his favorite Le Crusesut pan cooked upon his large Viking stove.

Needless to say, I denied politely, inwardly thinking of the bright yellow and swirling whites of my perfectly cooked, fluffy scrambled eggs glimmering slightly with extra virgin olive oil and speckled with ground black pepper.

Although his lack of cooking skills were apparent, what I didn’t realize then was the brilliance of his statement “flajammas”. So often people create dishes or food items that are so far from the traditional, they should really be presented what they are; a new creation. Not every consumable item needs to be lumped into a common name like “scrambled eggs”. Admit your creativity. Pick your own word! If for centuries people had just had the brilliance and confidence to re-name their culinary creation rather than grouping it along with the same word as something it resembles or the name of the creation they aspired towards, countless conflicts would never have been fought, families would be united, individuals would be less confused and oppressed.

The food category in which this causes disagreements most is in the area of pizza. People are always disputing over what is better deep dish or, well… pizza! Of course, there should really be no competition between the two , if we are to follow the flajammas model, because deep dish pizza should not even be called pizza! Despite the uncertainty of pizza’s deepest roots, pizza as we know it has its roots in Italy, Naples to be more precise. Here the practice of baking a flat bread with a variety of toppings was perfected. Around the turn of the century when Italians moved to New York City, one immigrant by the name of Gennaro Lombardi opened the first American-Neapolitan pizza place, the still popular Lombardi’s. And of course, it wasn’t until 1925 with the establishment of Pepe’s Pizza in New Haven Connecticut and thus the birth of the “New Haven Style Pizza” that pizza in America really was perfected. Nonetheless, nearly forty years later the “Chicago-style” or “deep-dish” pizza was invented. Note the key word “invented”, meaning that an individual came up with a new creation.

I would like to stress that my argument overall is not a dispute of quality. While Pepe’s may be particularly dear to my heart it is simply used as an example and is not essential to this piece. But, as a side note, the natural evolution of pizza-making, which led to the creation of perfection in the New Haven Style pizza does vary from the “invention” of the Chicago-style Pizza. New Haven Style Pizza is similar enough to Neapolitan style Pizza. Both are baked in large ovens that create such tasty pizzas by reaching very hot temperatures (Pepe’s coal fired oven reaches over 800 degrees). Both pizzas have a very thin crust, with a nice crisp to the bite—the evolution here selected for a crispier pizza, with a “cracker”-like crust, and burnt pieces along the edges. And, both pizzas must use the freshest of ingredients, and an acidic, light, fresh, tomatoey sauce on their red pizzas.

The Chicago-style Pizza, by comparison, seems like some strange alien cousin! They have only a few similarities: they are made of dough, they are both roughly circular, and they are both baked. The dough taste dramatically different. A Chicago style pizza is baked in a pan, which allows the outer edges to develop a flaky, almost buttery consistency—it is quite nice, I’ll admit. The layers of dough are soft and, well, dough-y from being baked slowly at about 490 degrees (the temperature at which Girodano’s bakes their pies). Also, there is much more dough used in a Chicago style pizza than in a Neapolitan, since “deep-dish pizzas” are often over an inch thick. I won’t argue much about the circle shape. As to the ingredients. A Chicago-style pizza has a far different sauce than a Neapolitan—it is much thicker, and more processed. Also, the main ingredient in a Chicago-style pizza is cheese—it’s just a really cheesy, gooey thing! so, it maters less what the dough tastes like or the freshness of the ingredients. In contrast, the focal point of the Neapolitan pizza is the quality of the crust.

Had the individual who invented Chicago-style pizza, whether it had been Ike Sewell or Rudy Mainati (the two names that are in dispute for the claim) had the “flajamma” intelligence, the petty debate between deep-dish and flat pizza would never exist to pester my ears.

Let’s take for example the hamburger. We all agree that a hamburger is a circular-shaped patty most commonly made of ground beef, cooked and eaten on a hamburger bun. Among others, popular toppings for the hamburger include ketchup and tomatoes. Now, we all know of the Sloppy Joe, right? They are similar in concept. The Sloppy Joe is also made of ground beef that is formed into a circular shape, served on a hamburger bun and mixed with a tomato sauce. Now, we don’t hear any debate between the quality of a hamburger in comparison to a Sloppy Joe, yet they are as similar to one another as deep-dish pizza is to Neapolitan. The reason for the lack of dispute lies solely in the name: since they’re called different names there is less nominal similarity and thus the objects are less comparable. Same goes for a sausage and a hot dog.

So, we can’t correct the mistakes of the past. We’re stuck with having Chicago-style and Neapolitan-style pizzas be called “pizzas”. At this point, there’s nothing that can be done. But, for the future, if you go on to be a great inventor of a food, do us all a service: use your creativity and come up with a name that allows the uniqueness of your creation to flourish. “Flajammas” need not always be terrible tasting; the Chicago-style pizza is a very popular and, to many, scrumptious dish that has created new markets and enriched the lives of thousands. It’s just not pizza.

dippy-do-da-egg wrote: Also, there is much more dough used in a Chicago style pizza than in a Neapolitan, since “deep-dish pizzas” are often over an inch thick. I won’t argue much about the circle shape. As to the ingredients. A Chicago-style pizza has a far different sauce than a Neapolitan—it is much thicker, and more processed.

[...]

It’s just not pizza.

Disagree entirely.

If your only frame of reference for Italian pizza is Neapolitan pizza, then I understand. However, there are thicker styles of pizza in Italy, like Lazio's "Pizza Rustica/al Taglio," for instance. It's not quite deep dish, but I'd say Chicago deep dish is a logical extension of that concept, and if you're going to disqualify deep dish as pizza, you're going to have to disqualify pizza rustica and other Italian bakery-style pizzas from the definition as well.

I certainly think there's room for all those styles in the term "pizza."

Binko wrote:

dippy-do-da-egg wrote: Also, there is much more dough used in a Chicago style pizza than in a Neapolitan, since “deep-dish pizzas” are often over an inch thick. I won’t argue much about the circle shape. As to the ingredients. A Chicago-style pizza has a far different sauce than a Neapolitan—it is much thicker, and more processed.

[...]

It’s just not pizza.

Disagree entirely.

If your only frame of reference for Italian pizza is Neapolitan pizza, then I understand. However, there are thicker styles of pizza in Italy, like Lazio's "Pizza Rustica/al Taglio," for instance. It's not quite deep dish, but I'd say Chicago deep dish is a logical extension of that concept, and if you're going to disqualify deep dish as pizza, you're going to have to disqualify pizza rustica and other Italian bakery-style pizzas from the definition as well.

I certainly think there's room for all those styles in the term "pizza."

Binko, I agree. I think we are on very uncertain ground when we assert, in relation to food, "what you think is A is not A," as in you don't know Chicago hot dogs, Tacos al Pastor, Italian ice, whatever. It's a big old world with lots of space of regional/individual variation on a theme.

Thank you both for the response-- actually, I agree with both of you. I did not know about the Pizza Rustica, Binko, but I suppose Sicilian styles are also thicker. And with this in mind the argument I am making that Neapolitan style pizzas are true pizzas because they came first doesn't hold up. And to clarify: I have no intentions of limiting the variations of foods out there-- heavens, that's the last thing I'd want to do! But I do stand by that many disagreements on these food variations come from the fact that they share the same name.

But I do stand by that many disagreements on these food variations come from the fact that they share the same name.

Check out some of the threads on "BBQ" if you want additional confirmation of this very valid insight.

jbw wrote:

But I do stand by that many disagreements on these food variations come from the fact that they share the same name.

Check out some of the threads on "BBQ" if you want additional confirmation of this very valid insight.

I must admit, though I defend a broad definition of pizza, my BBQ definition is pretty narrow: low and slow over wood.

Binko wrote:

jbw wrote:

But I do stand by that many disagreements on these food variations come from the fact that they share the same name.

Check out some of the threads on "BBQ" if you want additional confirmation of this very valid insight.

I must admit, though I defend a broad definition of pizza, my BBQ definition is pretty narrow: low and slow over wood.

My point exactly. It's your definition, but others (including the dictionary) define it far more broadly. This is my take on the issue from a fairly extensive thread on another site:

"I've often heard it said on these and other boards that if there's no smoke, there's no BBQ. Well, one other barbecue locus where the smoke doesn't necessarily touch the meat is in the dictionary. This is how Webster's defines "barbecue":

"1 : to roast or broil on a rack or revolving spit over or before a source of heat (as hot coals)
2 : to cook in a highly seasoned vinegar sauce"

Now, I would never consult a dictionary to determine what constitutes good barbecue, but Webster's is a pretty good authority for language usage, and I think we spend a lot of time arguing over what is and is not "BBQ" when BBQ itself has become (and maybe always was) a fairly generic term. Perhaps before discussing it seriously, we need to apply an adjective such as what, e.g., constitutes "good" BBQ or "Texas" BBQ or even, God help us, "Chicago" BBQ. But to try to eliminate the term BBQ from the landscape (and particularly long after our marketing geniuses have gotten ahold of it) unless connected to a specific technique seems to me, however just the cause, to be a losing battle. No matter what our great pitmasters and BBQ mavens say and do, the word "BBQ" will continue to raise its head in smokeless environments, as in "KFC Honey BBQ Sandwich."

Since that post I've been thinking about this a little further, and as long as people continue to call anything with BBQ sauce slathered on it "BBQ" (i.e., definition 2 above), I think we're stuck with a much wider definition of the term.

Of course both the terms "Barbecue" and "Pizza" have also come to denote flavors for snack foods. There is a lot of gray area between a Neopolitan Pizza Margherita and Pepperidge Farm® - Flavor Blasted® Xplosive Pizza® Goldfish® Crackers.

Take your taste buds on a trip to the savory stratosphere

jbw wrote:
Since that post I've been thinking about this a little further, and as long as people continue to call anything with BBQ sauce slathered on it "BBQ" (i.e., definition 2 above), I think we're stuck with a much wider definition of the term.

Don't consider me part of that "we."
I know what BBQ is. Webster is just a book. Just because the masses are a**es doesn't mean I have to conform. Never did, never will.