Chicago Deep Dish Pizza from Lou Malnati’s:

The slice of pizza you see above is from the Lou Malnati’s in the South Loop of Chicago. Michael and I went there because Chicago deep dish pizza is legendary and we remember eating at Uno’s on Lombard before it was a “Chicago Grill”. Our gut instinct told us to follow Bourdain out to Burt’s Place but our time constraints meant we had to eat somewhere closer to the hotel. We had a slew of options for deep dish pizza near our hotel including the original Uno’s, but we chose Lou Malnati’s with the butter crust because it kept popping up on the Internet as the best.

Either everyone who posts on Chowhound regarding Chicago deep dish pizza has bad taste or we caught a bad night. Lou Malnati’s was one of the worst dining experiences I have had in a while. The place had no soul whatsoever. We might as well have been eating in North Dakota because it felt no different than a chain restaurant. To top it off our pizza was bad. There was no tomato sauce to speak of and the ingredients lacked flavor. Michael and I also felt like we were part of an assembly line of diners who didn’t care about anything other than saying we ate deep dish in Chicago. This didn’t stop us from eating the whole pie but we were bummed.

It is sad to see what Uno’s has become because I remember it being one of my favorite places to eat growing up. What might be even sadder is that the rest of the deep dish places in Chicago decided to follow suit and turn their restaurants into chain’s. Most reviews you read will tell you it doesn’t matter which place you choose to get deep dish because they are all the same. Let me assure you that they are all created equal and all equally bad.