Lou Malnati's Pizzeria

Summary

There are many locations of this pizza chain in Chicago. I’ve had Chicago deep dish before but it’s been a while. I thought this was a safe bet, and it reminded me of how cool eating outside of NYC could be.

The regular order of chicken buffalo boneless wings was pretty good. Nothing crazy about it except price point was cheap, and it was good. The batter was actually crispy and not soggy. It came with celery sticks and ranch dressing.

The personal sized Lou came with spinach, mushrooms, and sliced roma tomatoes. It was covered with a blend of mozzarella and romano and cheddar cheese on a garlic buttercrust. This pizza was fairly bland for me since it didn’t come with sauce on the pizza. The crust was crispy and fluffy though with an interesting after taste. It was that sensation where it tastes like a thick cornmeal crust (subtly sharp and sweet).

The personal sized Malnati Chicago CLassic came with Lou’s lean sausage, extra cheese, and vine ripened tomato sauce on a buttercrust. Unlike the “Lou”, this one was delicious. The tomato and sauce were very potent and complement the buttercrust nicely. They had that super sharp tomato kick to it with very noticeable sweetness too. The sausage was pretty good too as it was salty, quite hearty, and dense. No need for the pepperoni here.

The individual serving of the chocolate chip pizza was a little bizarre to me. It’s suppose to be a chocolate chip cookie topped with vanilla bean ice cream and whipped cream. I was thinking we’d get a ramekin sized cookie, but instead we were served a ramekin with the cookie inside it. The cookie was quite soft and not obvious to the eye, but it tasted like very hot cookie dough.

There isn’t too much to complain about this place really. Service was fast, and sodas were unlimited. The prices were considerably cheaper than NYC places. Deep dish pizzas take about 30 minutes to cook.

Final Verdict

We liked this Chicago deep dish location, especially the crust on the pizza. The sauce on the Malnati sausage pizza was delicious.

Yelp Jabs

Although the wait was long (1.5 hours), I was able to pre-order my pizza so it would be ready when I came back

We visited this place at 5:00 PM on a weeknight when it was 15 degrees outside, and there was no wait time. Here’s a tip if you want to get into restaurants without waiting: don’t eat with the herd.

The pizza was good. We had thin crust–don’t like deep dish.

This lovely person is from Escondido, CA. I would love to ask them why are they eating thin crust pizza in Chicago. It is the epitome of an oxymoron.