The Layered History of Chicago Pizza

10 Minute read

07 Oct 2026

Deep Dish Pizza. Credit: Chenyu Guan on Unsplash

From tavern-style squares to towering deep dish, Chicago’s pizza history is filled with disputed origins, overlooked pioneers, and fierce hometown loyalties.

While tourists flock to Chicago for its famous deep-dish pizza, many locals favor a much thinner pie. The ultra-thin, square-cut tavern style took hold in the city’s bars in the 1940s.

Deep-dish pizza emerged around the same time, with pan and stuffed styles following decades later. Deep dish even got a national roasting from The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, who called it “a fucking casserole.” How dare you, sir?

So what, then, is Chicago-style pizza?

“People only equate Chicago with deep dish because that’s what tourists can easily experience here,” says food writer Steve Dolinsky, author of Pizza City, USA and The Ultimate Chicago Pizza Guide.

Chicago’s Tavern-Style Roots

Pizza gained a wider following in Chicago in the early 1940s, according to pizza historian Peter Regas. Tavern owners served it to encourage patrons to order drinks.

After their shifts, workers would pop into a neighborhood tavern for a beer. Some owners handed out thin pizza cut into small squares and served on napkins. Often topped with cheese, tomato sauce, and nuggets of spiced Italian sausage, the slices were easy to eat with one hand. More importantly? They were salty, giving patrons another reason to order a beer.

Several pizzerias claim to have created tavern-style pizza, but Vito & Nick’s Pizzeria, now at 84th Street and Pulaski Road in Ashburn, is one of its early pioneers. The business began as Vito Barraco’s tavern. After his son, Nick, returned from military service, Vito’s wife, Mary, developed the family’s thin-crust pizza in the mid-1940s. Home Run Inn, whose original tavern opened in 1923, was another early adopter. It served free, crispy pizza squares at the bar in the 1940s before adding pizza to its menu in 1947. The cracker-thin style spread throughout the city and suburbs.

The Deep-Dish Dynasty Begins

The origin story of Chicago’s famous deep-dish pizza begins in 1943 at a River North restaurant called The Pizzeria, later renamed Pizzeria Uno. According to Regas’s research, Ric Riccardo opened the restaurant, and Ike Sewell later joined the business. But who deserves credit for creating the pizza remains deliciously murky.

Riccardo, who came to Chicago in the late 1920s, experimented with rich dough pressed into cake pans found in the restaurant space. The resulting buttery crust held cheese, sausage, and tangy tomato sauce. It resembled a fruit pie, yet with a decidedly different flavor. This early version was thinner and lighter than the towering deep dish we know today.

Rudy Malnati Sr., a longtime manager at Pizzeria Uno, has also been credited with creating deep dish. But Regas’s research brings another cook into the story: Alice Mae Redmond, who helped transform its crust.

Redmond, a Black woman born in Mississippi in 1915, moved to Chicago in the 1940s as part of the Great Migration and found work in Riccardo’s kitchen. The pizza dough was difficult to stretch and press into the pan. Drawing on her grandmother’s Southern biscuit recipe, she reworked the dough to make it more pliable, helping develop the rich, biscuit-like crust that became a hallmark of deep dish.

“Alice Mae Redmond is the one who added more oil to get the dough to be able to stretch it,” Dolinsky says. “But she doesn’t get the credit for making deep dish what it became and what it is today.”

Redmond’s recipe would go on to help other pizzerias make their mark. After cooking at Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due, she moved to Gino’s on Rush Street around 1960, then to Gino’s East when it opened in 1966. There, she helped make the multi-level restaurant just east of Michigan Avenue one of Chicago’s most famous deep-dish joints before retiring in 1989.

She later shared her recipe and expertise with Michael Coli at Old World Pizza in suburban Elmwood Park, according to Dolinsky. Coli’s son, Brian, brought that recipe to Crystal Lake when he opened Georgio’s Chicago Pizzeria & Pub in 2002. Her deep dish lives on there today.

Another pizzeria with roots in the Uno kitchen? Lou Malnati’s. Lou and his father, Rudy Malnati Sr., both worked at Pizzeria Uno. In 1971, with years of pizza-making experience under his belt, Lou opened his namesake pizzeria with his wife, Jean, in Lincolnwood, a northern suburb of Chicago. That original restaurant remains open today. Their sons, Marc and Rick, helped grow the business into a chain with more than 70 locations across Illinois, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

The Malnati pizza family tree sprouted another branch in 1991, when Lou’s half brother, Rudy Malnati Jr., opened Pizano’s on State Street in the Gold Coast. Known for deep-dish and buttery thin-crust pizza, Pizano’s now has four locations across Chicago.

Pizza Evolves and Expands Beyond Deep Dish

The 1970s brought another Chicago style: stuffed pizza. Nancy’s Pizza dates its version to 1971; Giordano’s opened in 1974, followed by Edwardo’s in 1978. Imagine a deep dish becoming even heftier: a second thin layer of dough covers the cheese and fillings, with tomato sauce spread on top.

In 1971, a pioneering young pizza maker named Burt Katz opened Pequod’s in suburban Morton Grove after selling his stake in Gullivers, a Far North Side Chicago pizzeria that opened in 1965. His riff on deep dish? Pan pizza with a caramelized cheese crust, which became Pequod’s signature.

Katz sold Pequod’s in the mid-1980s, planning to leave the pizza business. By 1989, he was back, opening what became Burt’s Place in Morton Grove. The restaurant went on to great acclaim: its pizza appeared on the cover of Saveur, and Anthony Bourdain visited for No Reservations. Meanwhile, Pequod’s new owners opened a second location in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in 1992, where people still line up for a taste of that caramelized crust.

Chicago Pizza’s Third Wave

Today’s Chicago pizza scene extends far beyond deep dish and tavern style. Pizzerias serve New York, New Haven, Detroit, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Quad Cities, and Roman al taglio styles, according to Dolinsky.

The artisanal pizza movement has also taken hold, with pizzerias experimenting with regional flours, making their own sausage, and changing toppings with the seasons. These days, a sausage-and-onion pie might get an extra kick from spicy Chicago-style giardiniera.

You’ll find Robert’s Pizza & Dough Co., tied for No. 35 in the 50 Top Pizza World 2026 rankings, and the first Bonci outside Rome. Piece Brewery & Pizzeria serves New Haven-style pies, while Sharpies bakes Detroit-style squares. There’s also Milly’s Pizza in the Pan, Pizz’amici, Middle Brow, Pat’s Pizza, Nella Pizza e Pasta, Paulie Gee’s, and Zazas, plus Kim’s Uncle Pizza in suburban Westmont. Even Great Lake is back, serving pizza again after closing in 2013. Its mortadella pie topped GQ writer Alan Richman’s list of America’s best pizzas in 2009.

And now you can even get tavern-style pizza at Zarella in River North, a neighborhood once dominated by deep dish. Maybe tourists will leave knowing what Chicagoans have said for years: It’s really all about tavern style.

“We’ve seen this evolution, which is so cool,” Dolinsky says. “That we have all these styles now makes Chicago a better pizza town. That’s my argument. Always.”