Food Fight: Chicago Style vs. New York Style Pizza

CHICAGO:

Discovering a poorly made pizza in Chicago is a challenge in itself. The city offers taverns specializing in New York, Detroit and classic Italian styles. Yet, when it comes to pies topped with tomato and cheese, the best bang for your buck is undoubtedly the famous deep dish.

Invented by the local Uno’s Pizzeria & Grill, the best deep dish holds a thin, chewy dough bordering on fluffy without being too thick. Layered on top is rich, melted mozzarella cheese and a refreshing blend of diced tomatoes, crushed oregano and basil — making each bite taste like an Italian garden.

Cast-iron pans used for cooking provide greater heat retention, ensuring a deliciously warm bite regardless of density. Deep dish requires commitment to time and detail, with the final product inarguably offering the most filling pizza option.

Deep dish naysayers may decry its portion size. They may say its slices are too dense or the time needed to cook detracts from casual eating. Some even claim it isn’t pizza at all. Nonsense.

McDonald’s famed “Big Mac” cheeseburger is nearly two burgers stacked on top of each other, but nobody claims it isn’t a burger. Sheet cakes similarly layer their batter and icing over themselves, yet the outcome is still recognized as a singular cake. 

The onus of deciding what is or isn’t a pizza isn’t on the eater, but for the pie to prove. Enlarged portions and preparation don’t discount deep dish as pizza. It’s simply more.

The nearest deep dish vendor to Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus is Giordano’s, located at 6836 N. Sheridan Rd., with 12-inch pies at $19.15. In comparison, the nearest thin crust option is Blaze Pizza, located at 6550 N. Sheridan Rd. with 11-inch alternatives at $12.29. 

Blaze’s marginally cheaper pizzas damningly hold less than a third of the caloric portion of Giordano’s. Customers would need to pay close to $40 in thin crust for the same amount of food as a single deep dish pie.

For those with a smaller palate, deep dish may seem daunting. However, it offers a delectable meal capable of providing three times as much food compared to its competition — at half the price.

New York style, Detroit style or even grandma-style are all adequate pizza options. But the Chicago-born deep dish delivers the most cost-effective, compact bites of flavor for college students to score locally-sourced leftovers.

NEW YORK:

The biggest culture shock I experienced upon moving from New York to Chicago wasn’t the slow walking pace nor the staggering winds. No, the biggest — and most devastating — shock was the lack of greasy, gooey New York-style pizza.

New York-style pizza is one of the greatest American inventions, equal only to jazz and comic books. Its oversized slices come with a dainty layer of tomato sauce and mild, yet seasoned mozzarella, all hugged by a crispy, chewy crust.

Chicago’s two signature pizza varieties, deep dish and tavern-style, prove the danger of extremes. Deep dish’s bulky crust is brittle and tasteless, while tavern-style’s is thin and often burnt. The two also can’t decide on the cheese, with deep dish far surpassing the daily recommended dairy intake and tavern-style having an uncomfortably unctuous cheese.

They do, however, agree on one thing — being subpar to New York style.

New York-style pizza understands the Goldilocks effect. A single slice sits squarely — or, triangularly — at the equilibrium of taste and satisfaction. With grains from the dough, a one-two combo of dairy protein from the cheese, fruit from the tomato sauce and vegetables from the dealer’s choice of toppings, the New York slice is a certified nutrition bomb.

Price and accessibility are also key draws for the New York slice. Whether strolling down the sunny streets of Harlem or navigating the tourist-infested Bermuda Triangle that is Times Square, a reliably cheap slice of pizza is almost guaranteed to be served on a convenient, if flimsy, paper plate.

In fact, the cost of a pizza slice was famous for never exceeding the price of a subway ride — aptly dubbed the “Pizza Principle.” Unfortunately, the principle has faltered since the onset of COVID-19, with the once-iconic dollar slice rising to the absurd price of $1.50, according to Bloomberg, but that’s still more bang for your buck than an overpriced pie in Chicago.

As of this article’s publication, a classic six-inch deep dish pie from Giordano’s costs $10.55, while a personal pie from Lou Malnati’s is $15.25. Even if these pies are shared, that’s still a major price jump.

Chicago excels at many things — blues, dive bars, citation manuals — but it just can’t do pizza.