Lou Malnati's Pizzeria

The deep-dish pizza argument in Chicago has two sides: Giordano's and Lou Malnati's. The locals overwhelmingly pick Lou's, and the original River North location — opened in 1971 by the son of one of the men who helped create deep-dish pizza at Pizzeria Uno in the 1940s — is where you go to understand why.

Lou Malnati's deep dish has a buttery, flaky crust that owes more to pastry than bread, layered with sliced mozzarella (not shredded — this matters), Italian sausage that covers the entire surface in a single seasoned layer, and crushed tomatoes on top. The order of ingredients — cheese on the bottom, sauce on top — is the opposite of conventional pizza and is what makes Chicago deep-dish its own food category rather than just thick pizza. The Malnati Chicago Classic, with its sausage patty and butter crust, is the canonical order.

The restaurant itself is no-frills — wood panelling, booth seating, the kind of place where your server has worked there for 15 years and calls everyone 'hon.' The wait for a table can be long, but the wait for the pizza will be 40-50 minutes regardless, because deep dish is baked in a pan like a pie and cannot be rushed. Order a salad to start and a beer to drink, and use the time to observe the mix of office workers, tourists, and families who make up a typical Lou Malnati's crowd — it's one of the few restaurants in the city where all demographics of Chicago eat in the same room.