Chicago Pizza Invasion: Lou Malnati’s and Pizano’s

As a non-native of Milwaukee, I’ll admit it took me a minute, maybe two. But yes, now, half-a-lifetime later, I finally hate Chicago in all the appropriate ways. It is expensive, and the traffic is terrible. The showoff-y skyline prominently features a one-million-point font, all-caps endorsement of the third president to ever be impeached in the United States. O’Hare feels like a teeming abattoir. R. Kelly was born there. Don’t get me started on the Bears or the Cubs or their fans that caravan to town with their superiority and Sandburg jerseys to take advantage of our sacred beer ’n’ brat tailgating culture that their sky-high Lakeview rents and urban stacking could never allow. Then, there’s the way all those Illinois folk drive. And the condescension, even when—especially when—they are trying to be nice about our fair burg. If another Chicagoan, upon learning my place of residence, tells me, “Oh, Milwaukee’s actually pretty nice,” I will consider a creed of never traveling south of Kenosha. 

But let’s be very clear, not only with the sober perspective of an outsider, but as an objective possessor of a rotund appetite: Chicago has far better pizza than Milwaukee. 

This is no slight. Chicago has far better pizza than almost anywhere, arguably, New York and Napoli included. Its status as a world-class food city can’t be overstated. Its allure with the lot of foodies and Food Channel devotees and Eater readers and rock star chefs looking to break through or level up with a second location is almost unparalleled. Whether you put any stock at all in such metrics is inconsequential to the summation that Chicago, in terms of food trends and taste-making, is important. Combine this with endlessly sprawling neighborhoods of culinary diversity, a deep-rooted tavern culture and appropriate need-to-stay-warm fortifying fare appetites, and Chicago has become something like pizza Mecca. They have at least three distinct, world-known styles. There is also plenty of top-tier Neapolitan, Roman, New York slicery, Detroit burnt edging, even destination-worthy coal-fired offerings.  

Chicago pizza is so good that you just have to cross the border, end up in a far-flung suburb, like, say, Gurnee, and without even trying, be fattened and slice-sated by area micro chains (Bill’s), macro chains (Rosati’s), and weird corner joint one-offs (Wayne’s) that would put most of our best to shame. Over the past few years, that same northward Chicago crust creep has continued across state lines, with two of their biggest names now available in Milwaukee: Lou Malnati’s and Pizano’s. You don’t even have to go south of Kenosha. But we do have to maybe shrug off the little brother syndrome so heavily cast by our big shouldered neighbor and—with open minds and guts and wallets—embrace it.  

Lou Malnati’s

8799 N. Port Washington Road, Fox Point,

414- 446-3500

Over five decades, more than 50 locations and six million pizzas served each year, Lou’s—as it is charmingly, colloquially known—has established itself as probably the most successful deep-dish pizza operation in Chicago.  

Yet, it’s the thin crust that highlights and underscores everything so lacking with so much Milwaukee-style pizza: the crust itself is cracker thin, but there is no flop. And if ever a local politician could bridge the gap of divisive rhetoric of the day, a simple platform, put into practice, could rally even the most indifferent: we must stop the flop. Tavern-style pizza—as it is known, as it originated in Chicago drinking institutions like Vito & Nick’s and the Home Run Inn, as a snack to nosh on while drinking beer, so that you would want to drink more beer—is supposed to hold up exactly like this. With a golden hue and buttery sheen finish, Lou’s thin square cut pieces have no problem maintaining integrity, structure, needing only one hand and no worry to steer all pertinent toppings towards the face. You don’t even need to break concentration from the TV to eat a piece. It holds up to lazy microwaving or any more appropriate rewarming. (The latter is often, to many, painfully necessary—given the Fox Point takeout-only location).    

Cheese is draped as if by a socialist mayor, blanketing, giving generously to every square inch, insulating punchy pepperoni whispers that stay warm just underneath, consistently, strategically placed like unavoidable land mines of salty, beefy Chicago stockyard flavor. The sauce is bright, mostly sweet, a bit tangy, gently herbed, and it holds the whole package together in sticky harmony.  

And somehow, all this seems entirely unrelated to the fork or two-handed fare that made Lou Malnati’s famous, back when it all started. Though the family tree is tangented and twisted, Lou himself took cues from his dad, Rudy, the proprietor of Pizzeria Uno when that establishment became the O.G. in the deep-dish game. It is a simple formula: buttery crust, Wisconsin mozzarella, California tomatoes. Using a bed of triple rise yeast dough, everything is set into a high-sided, anodized, steel, round pan, pushed to the edge and up the inside. There is a patented buttercrust option, with butter folded into said dough. This is obviously a good idea.

So is, maybe more surprisingly, the build: dough, cheese, toppings, then sauce. The result is a package with a toothsome mouthfeel, one that is hard to stop working on, like you’re a baby that needs a parent to remind you to finish the current bite before starting the next. The sauce acts as counterpoint icing. Tangy, chunky tomato ladles are liberally smacked atop in grandmotherly Sunday gravy bounty, bright enough to contrast the battering ram brunt of the hulk that will fill you up with two pieces, tops. But it’s actually not really so much a bomb. (Deep Dish is also not to be confused with “stuffed” pizza—the picture many conjure for the “it’s not pizza, it’s a quiche” argument against Chicago). It is a fairly reasonable crust, just with a lot of body, strength, a big back. This is pizza that gives a good hug, it’s a friend that you would ask to help you move. A warm, buttery element fills out the feel of the flaky-crust edges, end bites that have a little char, a little snap, not a small amount of grease. There’s a hint of burnt cheese crackeriness, making for a perfect slice-summating breadstick—especially if there’s topping and sauce fallout leftover for dipping.

But, really, the end-of-the-day feel, the one your stomach logs with nostalgia to counter future sad salad lunches, is of an endless cheesiness, the thick milky gloss stretching and slopping around other slices and your tongue. Mixing with fennel forward pinch-and-press sausage crumbles, these lustrous, smacky bites act like a marriage between our two worlds. Cheese and meat, teaming like there’s hope for an inner mouth symposium between two disparate cities.   

Pizano’s

1154 N. Water St.

414- 277-1777

Pizano’s is also in the family, so to speak, Rudy Malnati Jr. having opened his family style pizza joint in the Loop some 20 years after Lou, in the early ’90s.  

Rudy is Lou’s half-brother from their father’s second wife. Muddying the family tree further are offshoots like Gino’s East, whose owners hired away the original Uno cook, and Louisa’s, whose owner worked at Pizzeria Due, which was the second pizzeria opened by Uno owners Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo but the one that actually gave the name Uno to Uno itself. As with most 23 and Me results drunkenly spouted at you at some Christmas-time family gathering by a relative who just took up genealogy, you'll come upon half-researched variations of all this and then lose track. If you dig even a little bit, you’ll also find unsubstantiated claims that Pizano’s is Oprah’s favorite pizza (it seems a clip of her referencing Chicago Magazine’s thin crust ranking has been misinterpreted and widely disseminated). 

More importantly, location number six and the first outside the Chicagoland area, you have a place equally known for its deep-dish and for an iconic tavern-style Chicago pizza. The same sort that has been handed out at bars around Chicago for nearly a century, the same that most pizza nerds will tell you is the true “Chicago style,” the kind that most native Chicagoans seem to prefer.  

There’s a bit of a wheaty, sourdough-y essence about the golden crust, which is sturdy, platform-y, just nearing hot-oven blackness. But it never interferes, acting mostly as an apt base for the chunky, sweet, bursting bright tomato sauce and a liberal cheese coating that is cooked to a point approaching caramelization. Pepperoni (or the topping of your choice) is spread unsparingly just below this blanket, making for ideal bite ratios and an overriding neat package, with an allowance for the cheese to shine and stretch, display its grease shimmers and finish winter-coat-y and thick. 

As such style was intended, this is also not strictly a takeout affair. In fact, quite the opposite, as Pizano’s boldly, defiantly staked claim in the middle of Downtown. At the corner of Water and Juneau, in the red-checkered tablecloth modernized old-school bar and pizza and pasta joint, a Giannis jersey stares down one of Pippen on the wall.

The deep dish, whisked to your table some 30-minutes after order, in the eponymous dish itself, really relies on so many of the same pizza characteristics. In fact, it’s really just like a souped-up, muscly brother. Again, not that thick, it can easily still be eaten with hands. Tomato is heaped atop cheese inconsistently, artfully, abstractly. Fennel-flecked sausage wedges pop, whiffs of oregano abound, and a smoky earthiness from a well-seasoned, workhorse pan lingers. Cheese is double-layered, stretchy, soft but holding firm to its crust bed, lending an overwhelming profile, the heaviness just offset by acidic zest of chunky tomato brightness. Still, for the gut, it is a bit of a load: there’s an elaborate inch wall around, protecting, maintaining. Truthfully, sans the Lou butter coating option, it’s actually a bit hard to know what to do when you get there. Even if you’re not the type, even if you’re not normally like this, it is easy to feel bad about the crusty carb glut you are about to grapple with. This is maybe why some, myself included, will always still lean thin. 

Then again, many see it differently. Donna Marie Malnati, mother of Rudy Jr., creator of Pizano’s Pizzeria, who died this January at the age of 93, left explicit instructions for the celebration of her life: “I don’t want that damn thin-crust pizza,” Rudy said she told him. “The only thing I want served is our original deep-dish sausage and cheese.” The ying-yang is all maybe ridiculously bullish, like the SNL parodying skit come to life, but caring is something to never be taken lightly. And it’s at least good to earn your opinions, to wear them on your sleeve. It's important to know who you are, where you stand. We, in Wisconsin, have football. Chicagoans have deep-dish pizza. And now, we have it too, whether you like it or not: Another Lou’s is slated to open in Brookfield this summer, and another in Greenfield sometime after that.