First, an apology. This is supposed to be a biweekly newsletter and yet there was a distinct lack of September newsletters. A couple of things got in the way.
The plan was to do our first recipe newsletter. I figured a great way to kick that off was to follow Pizza Wars: Deep Dish with a recipe development letter detailing the process of coming up with a great deep dish pizza recipe. I made two pizzas using modifications of my go-to deep dish recipe and thought I’d do a couple more iterations before landing on two solid options.
Right about then, I got sick. I’ve been sick for a bit over a month now and there’s no real end in sight. It’s nothing serious or life-threatening, but it has really affected my ability to juggle work and other responsibilities. Not an excuse, just life.
At any rate, recipe stories will come but in the meantime, I have been working on a new series I’m calling Pizza Scout. Chicagoland is a big area: 50 wards in the city, more than 200 suburbs and over three thousand pizzerias. And I believe everyone deserves a good pizzeria nearby.
But let’s be honest: like everything in life, most things are just average. Not terrible, not something to belittle but a lot of pizza is more filling than amazing. And the point of this newsletter is to help you navigate through all those options and find the gems.
If you are in a new-to-you part of the city or suburbs, or if you just have never found “your spot,” you need a guide. Not a “10 best pizzas right now” listicle or “the best pizza in the Fox Valley as chosen by the people who visited our website” but “I’m in the near west suburbs, where can I get a good pizza?”
And while I can’t claim to have eaten at as many pizzerias as my friend James Duda has (probably over 1,000 by now), I’ve eaten at a lot of them and found some amazing ones along the way. So think of me as your scout: I either know the terrain or am willing to go check it out and report back.
And that’s where you come in. While I’ve had great pizza all over, I can’t know every place with a killer pie. So I want to hear from you, your friends, your pizza buddy who knows the good stuff and especially new pizzeria owners who could use a spotlight. But the bar is high - I want great spots, not just your local spot that is convenient and consistent. A pizza that made your ears perk up a bit or a place that made you think a different style of pizza than you were used to might really be something.
In this first edition of Pizza Scout, we’re heading into the city for two new (or new to you) Gems and just over the border to Evanston to a spot that doesn’t quite hit (yet).
Bucktown Pizza
Under the Tracks
Bucktown Pizza is under the CTA’s Western Avenue Blue Line Station in Bucktown (pizza and CTA stations seem to be a thing). It is the latest pizzeria opened by my peripatetic pizza pal, New Jersey’s own Joe Smith.
I’ve known Joe since he owned a spot in West Chicago called, appropriately enough, the Slice Spot, which he opened after losing a lease in Glen Ellyn for his pizzeria, Orno’s. A short time after that, he sold Slice Spot and opened a new place in Glen Ellyn called Pie Life, a former falafel shop, and later opened a second location in Carol Stream.
So what’s he doing in Bucktown? Joe was looking to open a place farther away from his two Pie Life pizzerias, which were less than a mile apart. He ended up selling the Carol Stream location and started looking for a spot in the city, finding a former coffee shop that had gone out of business. The owners of the Green Eye Lounge next door also own this building and after another potential renter pulled out, Joe got the lease and quickly set out to turn it into a pizzeria.
You can still see outlines of the coffee shop vibes in the cream walls and dark paneling. Joe knocked down the wall between the kitchen and the front counter, partly so he can interact with his customers, partly so they can see him making pies but mostly to get pies into and out of his Bakers Pride ovens.
The Crew
Joe runs a lean operation and always has: he had two teenagers, Jake and Joey, working at the Slice Spot when I first met him and they continued working for him after the move to Glen Ellyn. He’s actually selling Pie Life in Glen Ellyn to the two of them on an installment plan (young men in their 20s don’t have a lot of capital) and is more concerned with helping them succeed than with the details of the business end of the deal.
Now, he has two women working with him who had never worked in a pizzeria, Ariel and Isabell, and within two months they are balling dough, taking orders, doing prep and, very importantly in the case of Isabell, making delicious cookies. The cookie of the day was s’mores-inspired and was an absolute treat with marshmallows, a fun-size Hershey bar and a whole graham cracker baked inside.
A Taste of New Jersey
Joe makes two styles of pizza: New Jersey style and grandma style. New Jersey style is like the leaner, crispier cousin of New York style. The pizza is stretched much thinner and has almost no cornicione at all: sauced within half an inch of the edge.
I got three slices in total: a plain cheese, a cheese grandma and a tri-color (pesto, vodka and tomato sauces).
What Joe is serving is exactly what you want in a New Jersey slice and the plain cheese is almost the platonic ideal of the style. It’s very simple with a tasty tomato sauce and a nice scattering of aged mozzarella on top while staying super thin and incredibly crisp - no tip sag here. The crust has a tight crumb with plenty of structure and moisture while the reheat crisps up and slightly separates the bottom from the rest of the crust, leaving a thin layer that cracks when you do “the fold.” Joe was wearing a T-shirt from New Jersey pizzeria and YouTube video sensation Krispy Pizza (“Even Distribush”) known for the crispiness of their pies and Joe’s pies have that in spades.
The grandma pizza is baked in a long narrow pan so that each slice gets two sides of “crust.” Grandma pizza originates on Long Island, baked in a pan but not allowed to rise as high as a Sicilian pizza, with sauce on top, often in strips and with a heavy punch of garlic.
Joe’s is the New Jersey take on it: the sauce is the same tomato sauce used on his regular pizzas and is ladled on in a wide strip that nearly covers the top. He also doesn’t use a lot of oil in his pan: the crispy bottom of the crust has not a lick of oil to it. The crust is a little denser than the ones you would find at Professor Pizza or Zaza’s. It’s got some chew to it but not too much.
Let’s talk about that sauce: Joe’s tomato sauce is simple and delicious. He uses a combination of Stanislaus 7/11 and Alta Cucina tomatoes known for their deep tomato flavor and good balance of sweetness and tanginess. Joe blends it up in a giant bucket with salt, oregano, granulated garlic, lots of fresh basil, some olive oil and a touch of sugar, then sauces his pizzas generously - the sauce is the co-star with that super crispy crust.
With even more sauce, the tri-color was probably my favorite bite of the trip. In most places, a tri-color or tie-dye pizza consists of either concentric circles or Jackson Pollock splatters of vodka, tomato and pesto sauces. Joe’s is a little different: he tops the entire pizza with pesto sauce, then cheese, then wide circles of vodka and tomato sauces. The fact that every bite had that boost of basil-packed pesto really amped up the deliciousness. I could have one of those slices every week.
The Deets
The foundation of every pizza is its dough - without good dough you’re in a deep hole. Joe takes his dough seriously, starting with a blend of Italian flours (mostly Caputo 00 Pizzeria with a second one for flavor), water, yeast and salt. It’s mixed in a big Hobart mixer until smooth and supple. At that point, Joe adds a big squirt of olive oil, partly to enrich the dough but also partly to get it off the hook!
The dough is allowed to briefly bulk ferment and then it’s divided, weighed and balled by hand (Ariel and Isabell doing it on my visit), set into large plastic proofing trays and refrigerated, usually 30 to 36 hours but preferably 48.
This dough is used for both styles of pie. The grandma pies get a larger dough ball and are pressed into one of two types of LloydPans pans: long narrow pans (the type made for al taglio style pizzas like Bonci) or 14-inch grandma pans. They proof in the fridge and are never knocked down or stretched, so even a cold proof gives them that small but important lift.
On most of his pizzas, he’s using shreds of aged low-moisture mozzarella as well as slices of BelGioioso fresh mozzarella. He gets his pepperoni from Restaurant Depot (Mama Isabella brand) as well as most of his ingredients.
Joe isn’t using hard-to-source artisan ingredients or a secret family recipe from the Old Country. He’s using the same ingredients any local pizzeria can easily pick up on an average Tuesday but elevating them with technique and passion.
Once again, Joe changes neighborhoods and delivers another:
Bucktown Pizza
1912 N Western Ave, Chicago, IL 60647
Tue-Sun noon-10 p.m. · Closed Mondays
For some more behind-the-scenes shots, including video, head over to this story on the Pizza Lab Instagram.
The Spot
Up in Evanston, not far from the nearly billion-dollar Ryan Field for Northwestern’s Wildcats football team (currently ranked No. 24!), is a new pizzeria concept by Fred Gale (owner of the prior concept, Ten Mile House) and Otto Ade called The Spot.
While executive chef Matt Overpack designed the rest of the menu, the pizza recipe comes from Danny’s Pizza Place, a Garfield Ridge institution literally under the main flight path of Chicago Midway International Airport. I hate to report that I’ve never been to Danny’s (if I’m by Midway I’m usually meeting my friend Rose Barraco George over at Vito & Nick’s) so I can’t say how well they have replicated the pizza.
The Spot has a gorgeous if dimly lit interior with lots of wood accents and a sports-bar vibe with scattered TVs. They serve traditional Chicago-style thin crust (aka tavern-style) pizza and my go-to order at such places is sausage, well-done. But I saw cup-and-char pepperoni listed on the menu and figured I’d gild the lily.
The pizza came out looking great: well-browned, rolled very thin, with a sauce ring around the edge where the sauce caramelizes and intensifies. It is served on a plastic tray with lots of little bumps to keep that bottom elevated from any escaping juices.
But the pizza itself was just OK. The crust is fresh-rolled and is in the cracker-style tradition. It tastes and eats mostly like a dry cracker: baked flour notes, a tiny bit of salt and yeast and baked hard on the deck. It was relatively firm to start, and even the middle slice held up, but it lacked the true crispiness I associate with the best thin-crust pies and eventually the middle lost any crisp even though that raised tray prevented it from getting soggy.
The sausage was the best part: juicy nuggets and fennel-forward flavor. The cup-and-char pepperoni was a puzzle. The whole point of cup-and-char pepperoni is to… cup and char. But they put the pepperoni under the cheese, so it never really could. A few slices with less cheese on top tried their darnedest to cup and char but it was a pale imitation of the beautiful little chalices of pork grease you get with it on top.
The sauce was essentially invisible - put on with a very light hand (lots of fresh-rolled super-thin places hold back on sauce to prevent sog), it was probably based on tomato paste or heavy puree. Some of the pepper from the pepperoni did flavor the sauce, so it had a pleasant background heat that meant I didn’t need the red pepper flakes I usually use.
Cheese was plentiful - maybe too plentiful - but it had good tang and browned well. Once the pie cooled, though, that thick layer of cheese congealed and solidified unpleasantly. I’m not sure if it was the cheese or the combination of ingredients, but this was one salty pie (and I’m normally a salt hound).
I asked about the flour, cheese and pepperoni and the helpful staff tried to get me details, but the kitchen staff seemed unclear on the brand of any of the ingredients, going as far as to say that the pepperoni changed week to week.
While not a great pizza, I think with some tweaks it could be a solid rotation player. Cut back a little on the cheese, put the pepperoni on top (and commit to a quality brand like Ezzo or Rosa Grande), use the South Side “crispy” method of moving the pie to a fresh hot spot whenever it’s checked, put a little more work into the sauce and you’ve got a consistent Spot to grab a pie and a beer while watching the game.
Looking at some of the choices made in other parts of the menu, like using D’Amato’s coal-fired bread for all their sandwiches, and that tray made to keep the pizza crispy, this is clearly a team that is trying to do things right.
But as it stands today:
The Spot
1700 Central St, Evanston, IL 60201
847·905·0669
Mon, Wed-Thu 4-11 p.m. · Fri-Sat 11:30 a.m.-midnight · Sun 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. · Closed Tuesdays
Pizza Amelia
I’ve been to Pizza Amelia several times since first coming here about a year and a half ago to try out their East Coast-style pies. I met Mike Whittaker and his pizza maker and had some really pleasant conversations talking about bringing the style of pizza Mike grew up on to Chicago. Mike grew up around New Haven, Connecticut, so he’s a very lucky man.
Just before my wedding anniversary vacation in September, Mike texted me to tell me he had changed his recipe and invited me in to try the new and improved version. This was a surprise as the original pizza was already quite good.
When I got to Amelia, I sat down with Mike to discuss this change. Mike liked the old pizza but it didn’t quite hit where he wanted: the dough to him tasted too much like “pizza dough” while he wanted it to taste more like high-quality artisanal bread. Mike told me he and his pizza maker butted heads over this new vision (change is hard) and they eventually parted ways. So Mike needed to find a new pizza maker who shared his vision.
It’s a Small World After All
I’ve talked before about how Chicago lacks a great slice culture. Part of this is due to our indigenous styles not being well suited for the grab-and-go, walking and talking brio of a good slice shop. But that’s been changing, with great slice shops opening on a regular basis throughout the city. Four of them really stand out: Jimmy’s Pizza Cafe, Paulie Gee’s Wicker Park, Zaza’s and Professor Pizza.
Jimmy’s was the OG New York-style slice shop, originally in a small shop at Lincoln and Foster and now in a gorgeous new space on Montrose just west of Western. Paulie Gee’s brought the Brooklyn experience to Chicago, while Professor Pizza and Zaza’s introduced Long Island’s grandma slices alongside their traditional round pies.
What’s more interesting to me is what talent incubators these places have become. Anthony Scardino was on the opening staff of the Logan Square outpost of Paulie Gee’s, Chomp Pizza’s Travis Hezel worked at the Wicker location, while the Zaza’s pizza tree continues to grow both here in the city and in the suburbs (as Nemec Brothers) and spawn some new talent itself.
Mike knew Ben Knape from Ben’s days at Zaza’s and thought he should work with him someday. While at Zaza’s, Ben helped train Steve Owens, the general manager, pizzaiolo and dough developer at pizzA daDa, another amazing slice shop (future Pizza Lab article to come) that earned an 8.2 score from the one-bite, who-cares-about-the-rules guy. Ben also knows Joe Smith of Bucktown Pizza well.
A lot of the great slices you can get today can trace their lineage to these spots, along with Coalfire, the original East Coast coal-fired pizzeria owned by Dave Bonomi, who has trained or mentored so many in Chicago pizza.
Ben left Zaza’s to join Publican Quality Bread, one of the most outstanding artisan bread producers in Chicago, to really hone his bread-baking skills. But the lure of pizza was always there and when Mike inquired as to whether he might be interested in taking over the pizza program at Pizza Amelia, he jumped on the opportunity. Another Publican alum joined as well and they now make the dough, do the prep and bake the pies, while Mike takes orders, does the post-bake finishes and expedites.
The Pie
Mike and Ben have taken a very good pizza and made it even better. I ordered a traditional sausage and pepperoni pizza with no special instructions. I watched as Ben stretched the pie, topped it with sauce, cheese and toppings and launched it into the Bakers Pride oven (video can be found here on the Pizza Lab Instagram).
The pizza came out picture perfect (OK, the slicing shifted it a little): a deeply bronzed crust, a modest cornicione and sauce and cheese visible in spots all over the pie. It’s a beautiful pie that embodies my mantra that less is more.
As always, we start with the crust. It definitely hits that more bread-forward style Mike and Ben were going for. The cornicione is puffy but not as puffy as a New York-style pizza. It’s in between the flatter cornicione of Mike’s hometown New Haven-style and the puffier handle of a New York slice, hence the term East Coast-style that is displayed on the sign outside. The bake is good and dark but the crust has a little more moisture than Joe’s at Bucktown and does not have that straight, flop-free crust you could wave as a pennant. It does have some tip sag but as my friend and master pizzaiolo Leo Spizzirri said during a short class on New York slices at Pizza Expo Las Vegas this year, a little tip sag is not something to be ashamed of - it means your pizza has good moisture.
The dough is made with a combination of Caputo Tipo 1 and King Arthur Sir Lancelot flours. Tipo 1 is a less refined Italian flour that sits between refined white and whole-grain flour and is typically used in bread making for more wheaty flavor, while the Sir Lancelot is King Arthur’s strongest bread flour, bringing the high-protein gluten required to make a supple, stretchable dough. They start with a very frothy bloom of yeast so it’s very active and then mix it in stages with the flour, water and salt. The dough is bulk fermented for a while, then portioned and cold fermented for at least 24 hours but two days is the optimal goal.
The excellent tomato sauce starts with a blend of Stanislaus Alta Cucina plum tomatoes and Saporito heavy puree, blended with salt, pepper, basil, garlic, Italian seasoning and some olive oil. It has that sweet/tangy balance that Stanislaus is known for while the seasoning amps up the flavor. This is a saucy pie and this is a really good, really tomatoey sauce.
My pie got two kinds of cheese: a light scattering of Grande’s East Coast blend shredded cheese (a combination of aged low-moisture whole-milk and part-skim mozzarella) as well as dollops of Grande fior di latte fresh mozzarella. This gives you a bunch of different elements coming from the cheese - the aged mozzarella providing a little cheese pull while the fior di latte brings creamy milkiness.
The sausage is excellent, juicy and fatty with a good salt level, some black pepper and garlic as well as a bunch of fennel. Mike is a fellow fennel hound, so you know I’m going to love that sausage. It’s currently made by Chicago’s most famous sausage maker, Anichini Brothers (read this great story about them at Block Club Chicago). The pepperoni was terrific, the cup-and-char style from Ezzo, which makes one of my favorite pepperonis. Scattered on top of the cheese, the slices crisp up wonderfully. That cupping and charring process really elevates pepperoni: it gets all sorts of new flavor notes from browning and crisping the meat and intensifying the impact with those little chalices of flavored pork fat.
No Mr. Fancy Pants
Pizza Amelia is in a cute part of Roscoe Village dotted with shops and restaurants (and a resale shop with a very aggressive no-parking attitude next door - don’t park in the parking lot). The exterior is pretty simple: an all-glass front in a granny-flat building and a sign reading “Pizza Amelia - East Coast pies.” The interior is essentially the pizza kitchen, dominated by the ovens and prep station, with a counter for ordering, a small soda fridge and a freezer chest full of Italian ice that Mike offers to the little kids accompanying their dads to pick up their order. The ice is good: lots of different flavors. Mike gave me a lemon and it was tasty and cold.
This really is a takeout spot, but there are a few small tables and folding chairs in the front and you can take your pizzas outside where there is some patio seating and picnic tables. You can also order slices to go: there always seem to be cheese and pepperoni slices out on the rack that are tossed into the oven to reheat.
I think Mike and Ben have really hit a home run with the “new” pizza. It’s got a craveable sauce, excellent high-quality toppings, a beautiful crust and friendly faces to make it. Roscoe Village is lucky to have its own:
Pizza Amelia
2111 W Roscoe St, Chicago, IL 60618
773·697·8579
Tue-Fri 4-8:30 p.m. · Sat-Sun 11:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m. · Closed Mondays
So, let’s make the most of this beautiful day…
As Mister Rogers might say, it’s good to go away, but it’s good to come back, too. This newsletter is already running longer than Substack really likes (and some of you might have to click through to the website to see the end of it), so I will simply sign off with a profound thank you for waiting for this edition. I look forward to returning to a regular schedule and being your Pizza Scout. Please, do send me your pizza gems: you can leave a comment here or DM me on Instagram (@pizzalab.erst). There’s a world of pizza out there waiting to be discovered. And remember, I like you just the way you are.