When you think of great trios in music who share common DNA there’s one that rises to the top. Nope, I’m not talking about the Hanson brothers, I’m talking about the Brother’s Gibb who you may know (and love) as The Bee Gees. When asked who the constituent members of The Bee Gees are, most folks will easily identify one and may even come up with a second with a little head scratching. Most will struggle to name all three. This is a story of a food journey to try various deep-dish pizza places in Chicago during a recent visit to the birthplace of the eponymous deep-dish pizza. Like those who attempted to name all three Gibb brothers, we easily bookmarked a very well known shop and even identified a second one that was very good as well. In the process, we overlooked a third member of the family that would have been a mistake to leave out. Enough jive talkin’, let’s get to the reviews…

The Ground Rules

In a nod to the scientific method, we aimed to eliminate as many variables as possible in this evaluation. We ordered the same garlic bread with cheese appetizer at each restaurant and the same standard deep-dish pepperoni pizza. This was very much intended to see who was the best at delivering this Chicago staple. We did add extra appetizers based on what looked good at a couple of places but we tried to stick to a baseline set of similar products that would appeal to a wide range of customers. On to the reviews and see if, after a glorious trio of nights of this, there is such a thing as too much heaven. The restaurants are listed in the order that we visited them so as to not ruin the surprise of how we rank them.

Giodarno’s

Giodarno’s was a big name that we kept coming across when we looked at Chicago deep-dish pizza on the web. This was the first place that we went to when we got to Chicago because it happened to be the closest shop to where our hotel was located and was easy to get to during our first day of getting our bearings. It was a very modern, clean restaurant that delivered the goods in a way that you’d expect.

Appetizers

With this being the first stop of the journey, we decided to include what ended up being a consistent appetizer across the shops: Cheese bread. The appetizer portion here was good for four of us to share and get a couple of pieces each. The marinara sauce was good and tasted like what you’d imagine from a solid middle of the road sauce. The bread had a good amount of seasoning between the cheese and bread and that brought an extra dimension of flavor.

Pizza

This pizza was the star of the show. The crust was well cooked and, while firm, was also a little flakey. The “cheese pull” of this pizza was out of this world and looked like something you’d see in a commercial. The only knock that we have against this pizza is that the pepperoni kind of disappeared among the cheese and sauce. That is likely due to the substantial amount of cheese in the pizza and the coverage of sauce, which was complete but not in a bad way. As someone who loves a good cheese pizza, I was totally OK that this had a hint of pepperoni and the cheese stole the show.

Gibb Rating

Giordano’s was like Robin Gibb: very talented and bringing a strong performance but not the name getting all of the attention outside of the core fanbase. For those more interested in how solid Robin is in a lead role, give Massachusetts a listen. This is from their pre-disco era and his voice is simply amazing.

Lou Malnati’s

You can’t think of Chicago-style pizza without someone bringing up Lou Malnati’s. Anyone living in Chicago likely knows this mainstay of deep-dish pizza.

Appetizers

The bruschetta looked good on the menu and ended up being out-of-this-world delicious. It brought very fresh flavors and was expertly assembled.

The boys had the garlic bread with cheese while we tore into the bruschetta. It was a huge Italian loaf of bread cut in half lengthwise and served as two whole halves. The marinara sauce that was provided for dipping was very tasty and tasted fresh-made.

Pizza

I’m about to say the saddest thing that anyone could say about Chicago deep-dish pizza: it tasted like Pizza Hut Pan Pizza. I guess that’s more a complement to Pizza Hut that they pulled this off but I’m not one to throw much praise to Pizza Hut. The last great Pizza Hut experience was likely when they gave out Star Wars glasses (not plastic…glass) and had the sit-down Pac Man game in Princeton, IN. But I digress…

This pizza was good but wasn’t the best that we had during our trip. The edge crust was extremely crispy and was almost like a very crispy breadstick or thin crust pizza dough on the outside. It was also very buttery, which was a very odd combination with the extreme crispiness.

Gibb Rating

This is definitely the Barry Gibb of the trio as it’s the one that everyone can readily name. If you ask the average person outside of Chicago about famous Chicago-style pizza, they are likely going to be able to name Lou Malnati’s. Likewise, almost anyone who knows about music will be able to name Barry Gibb when asked about The Bee Gees. Much like the sound of a Barry Gibb falsetto, I don’t think I could handle much of this pizza on a regular basis.

Uno Pizzeria

I’m going to be completely honest in saying that we totally overlooked Uno Pizzeria. Uno Pizzeria is the birthplace of Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and has been serving it up since 1943. The restaurant had a college bar feel to it with small built-in wooden booths along the wall and wobbly tables in the middle of the floor. When I say the booths are small I mean they are comically small, especially when you cram three 6-foot-tall guys into it along with the matriarch of the family. With that being said, it really added to the experience and made it feel like we were experiencing a bit of history.

Appetizers

Their take on garlic bread with cheese was probably the smallest version of the appetizer from the three shops. It didn’t have a lot of the garlic bread undertones and the cheese kind of overpowered the rest of it. The sauce was a little thicker than the other places and had a good flavor to it. The texture of the sauce reminds me a bit of the sauce from our beloved New York Pizza in Homewood (R.I.P.).

Pizza

This pizza was quite the enigma. It looked and tasted like you’d imagine for a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza but it was noticeably lighter than the others. We didn’t walk away feeling as heavy as we did from the other joints. Maybe we had adjusted to the onslaught of cheese and break and had developed the ability of stayin’ alive in Chicago.

The toppings were the star of this show. They put a large amount of pepperoni on the pizza and the flavor really came through. On this pizza, the pepperoni looked to be on top of the sauce. This was unlike any of the other pies that we had. The other two had the toppings somewhere under the sauce.

Gibb Rating

It is totally the Maurice Gibb of the Chicago-style pizza scene: it was there from the beginning and is overshadowed by the others. The other two may have all of the glitz and glamour but this shop brings the soul. Barry and Robin were always out front and Maurice was just back there laying down some funky disco-era bass grooves and providing subtle harmonies all along. Likewise, Uno Pizzaria is just laying back not bombarding you with advertising and chatter but instead just hanging out in the back making darn-good pizza and representing the cuisine that they introduced to the world.

Closing Thoughts

After our last visit, we sat down and talked about how we would rank three solid contenders. None of them were a tragedy in our minds. Our ranking ended up being (with their final scores):

1. Giordarno’s (8 beautiful harmonies)
2. Uno Pizzeria (7 funky bass lines)
3. Lou Malnati’s (5 falsettos)