You had to have seen it coming. I mean, I live in and blog about Chicago. We're trying a bajillion restaurants. Is it such a surprise that today's post is about Giordano's world famous stuffed pizza?
I was raised on "St. Louis Style" pizza. Unless you've lived in St. Louis, there is a good chance that means absolutely nothing to you. Let me bring you up to speed. Pizza in St. Louis is a thin crusted delight that makes my mouth happy. It's cut into small squares and you can eat about 150 pieces in a single sitting.
Having that kind of a background, Chicago style pizza is incredibly intimidating to me. It's so... much. There's so much crust, so much cheese, so much sauce, and so much to digest.
I was fully prepared to not like Giordano's. Call it hometown loyalty or pizza snobery, but I moved to Chicago with a plan to dislike two things, the Cubs and the pizza. Even though my aunt and a twitter friend or two (I'm looking at you Becky Robinson) kept insisting I give deep dish a try, I thought I had my mind made up.
But it turns out I was wrong. Giordano's was delicious. What I've come to discover is that more just might be okay. In fact, more is pretty delicious. Can you see all that mozzarella? It quite literally oozed out of the pie once it was sliced. My favorite part of the night was watching out waitress serve it up for us. There's a little spatula flair that she did to cut the mozzarella and extract it from the rest of the cheesy mound still waiting to be devoured (or taken home in our case).
It had a crispy layer of crust at the bottom that stood up to all the cheese, sausage and mushroom we asked them to stuff into our pie. The sauce was tangy and there wasn't the over abundance of it that I remember on the deep dish pizzas I've eaten in the past. And even though I ate two rather sizable pieces I didn't walk away from the table feeling like my stomach was filled with lead. (Something else I've experienced with deep dish.) I'm also pleased to report that the remaining slices we brought home were quite possibly more tasty when I reheated them the next day!
There are several Giordano's in and around the city. Thanks to a misscommunication between the hubby and I, our little party ended up at two different locations. But, we were all reunited and seated easily at the Giordano's near Millennium Park instead of waiting the promised two hours at the location further north on Rush Street. For once I'm glad we're not expert communicators and got to make a choice between the two locations. Especially because after being seated and ordering one of these pies you wait more than 30 minutes for it to bake. This is definitely not fast food, but our pizza was absolutely worth the wait. Our server was a doll and continued to check in with the countdown until our pizza's arrival. Feeling like we should probably have something green to go with all that cheese, we ordered a house salad and it wasn't all that spectacular. But as I looked at the variety of fried appetizers on the tables all around us, it became clear that Giordano's doesn't specialize in healthy eats. They specialize in food that thrills the taste buds and clogs the arteries. Last night my taste buds, arteries and I enjoyed every bite of what they do best.
How do you feel about stuffed pizza?
