OK, cards on the table: I’m a New Yorker, and I have a very strong attachment to pizza (and bagels too, but that’s another post). So I find myself in Chicago, staying one block from Gino’s East, so I figured it was time to finally try Chicago-style deep dish pizza.
I sat at the bar, and asked the bartender for his recommendation for the best intro to deep-dish pizza for a non-meat-eater. He recommended the O.M.G. pie, which has mushrooms, green peppers, and onions, so I ordered that. They offered a 9″ and 12″ version, and as I was by myself, I got the 9″.
AS you can see, the pie came in its own pan, and the first piece was cut out for me. Subsequent pieces (I can’t call them “slices”) required cutting out with the spatula.
I was familiar enough to know that ingredients are upside-down compared to pizza, with “toppings” on the bottom, followed by cheese, and then the tomato sauce. It certainly looked tasty enough! So I dug in.
The first thing that’s odd is that you need a knife and fork to eat it. No self-respecting New Yorker would ever use a knife and fork to eat a pizza. But hey, this is Chicago, not New York, so I embraced that approach. And I must say, it was very tasty: the tomato sauce was fresh and bright, the cheese was rich and stringy, and the veggies were also good. But the crust?
It’s very odd: there is little or no crust underneath all the other good things. Instead, it’s all bunched up on the edge. And it isn’t anything like a pizza crust; rather, it’s a dense, cake-like bread. So as best as I could figure out, you eat the sauce/cheese/fillings, and then are left with a bunch of dense bread.
And the crust itself was good, but man oh man was it filling. I was barely able to finish half the pie. Contrast that with a 9″ thin-crust pie, which leaves room for dessert.
So what can I say? It was enjoyable, but it wasn’t pizza. I’d like to think of it as a tasty bread-based casserole. Now I can’t wait to get back to New York to experience the real thing once more.
I know I’m a terrible sinner, but I prefer Chicago style pizza, if it is done right, and I’m doubly a sinner because I don’t like Gino’s. The guts are good, but their crust is just what you say: a cakey thing all pushed up on the side.
I’m biased, though: 30 years ago I worked in the kitchen (and sometimes made the dough) for a Pizzeria Uno (way back before they became the very mundane and much less good “Pizzeria & Grill”) where getting the crust just so was the whole deal. Followed by creating a sea of cheese upon which little ships of pepperoni would sail.
After that my next choice would be a thin and crispy crust.
Then would come the soggy cardboard of New York style.
😛
It’s all good, though, when done right. Bread, cheese, tomato, salt. Yum.
If your pizza crust is soggy cardboard, it ain’t NY-style. 😝