Chicago Deep Dish Pizza appears as a signature dish in 1 United States cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Chicago deep-dish pizza · Chicago
Chicago's defining pie, built upside down in a cast-iron pan: an inch of buttery cornmeal crust holds slabs of mozzarella, fennel-sausage and chunky tomato.
Pizzeria Uno on Ohio Street served the first deep-dish in 1943 under owner Ike Sewell and original cook Rudy Malnati Sr., whose family later launched Lou Malnati's. The pan-baked, cheese-on-the-bottom architecture was a deliberate break from the East Coast slice, designed to function as a meal rather than a snack. By the 1960s a parallel tradition (stuffed pizza, with a second layer of dough above the cheese) appeared at Nancy's and Giordano's. Across the city, tavern-cut thin (square-sliced) has always outsold deep-dish two to one with locals, but deep-dish is what the postcard sells and what the visitor expects.
Where to eat in Chicago:
- Lou Malnati's (Lincoln Park)
- Pequod's Pizza
- Pizano's Pizza & Pasta
- Pizzeria Uno