Bob's Pizza [Meeting #137]

Bob's Pizza

1659 W 21st St (Map)
Chicago, IL 60608
(312) 600-6155

CPC invaded Bob's Pizza on Sunday, April 27, 2025.

Bob's Pizza has been open since 2021 and today was the first day any of us in the Chicago Pizza Club had been there. That's on us. In 4 years, Bob's has grown from its Pilsen roots to have four locations with Old Town, Hyde Park and Evanston all getting in on the fun. It's a smart move by Bob (there's no Bob - his name is Matt) since those are areas that have traditionally not been pizza destination, particularly when it comes to thin crust. No need to rehash the history of Bob's - go read this article at the reader if you care.

Bob's serves what they're calling Pilsen style pizza. That's not a thing and given the gentrification issues with Pilsen and Bob's decidedly not Mexican background, I'm a little surprised nobody's raised a stink about it. But if the people of Pilsen don't care, I'm certainly not going to get offended about it. I would be offended if the pizza sucked but it's actually very, very good.

This is a thin crust pizza that isn't really a traditional style. Several years ago, people started using artisan style to describe pretty much any pizza with a high quality bread as a crust so I guess that's how we can lazily categorize this. Bob's uses Old Style in the crust and presumably that's a contributing factor to the pleasant yeastiness in the crispy and chewy crust.

There were 9 members at the meeting and we went a little overboard with 4 pizzas. Bob's lets you design your own pies but we went with 4 of their specialty pizzas.

Bob's Premium Sausage Pizza is a pretty straightforward sausage pizza with the addition of pickled onions. This was the consensus best pizza of the meal. Every component was great including the top notch sausage and the rich herbaceous sauce. If I'm going to pick nits, I'll note the lower right quarter of the pizza could have used a smidge more sausage and more than a smidge more onion, but I had the large piece there so I was the only one strongly affected. There was some talk about ordering extra sauce on a return visit and I think I'd be on board with that.

The pepperoni pizza doesn't really have any twists that make it make sense to listed as one of the "Specialty Pizzas," but it was still really delicious pie. There were zero issues with topping quantity as this pie was blanketed with pepperoni.

The Pickle Pizza (Mortadella, garlic cream sauce, house dill pickles, premium mozzarella cheese, fresh dill) is the pizza that put Bob's on the map. Nobody loved this one but everyone who tried it finished their slice. It's not going to scratch that itch for people craving pizza - it's more of a delicious sandwich ingredients cooked on a pizza crust. I'm glad I tried it, I don't need to have it again.

The Wild Mushroom Pizza (roasted seasonal wild mushrooms, garlic cream sauce, onions, premium mozzarella cheese, brie cheese, white balsamic) was our second white pie. No meal should ever be 50% white pies but this one sounded good and we really didn't put too much thought into ordering. I thought the bites that had mushroom were great but obviously the pizza needed more of them. The brie was either a particularly bloomy variety or maybe that's what happens when white vinegar and brie get mixed together. Either way I liked that a lot, though not as much as the pizzas with sauce.

I mentioned the crust, I should probably include some pictures. This was really good stuff. 

Bob's is definitely a place we should have gotten to sooner. And it's one I'll go back to. Probably not the Pilsen location - if I'm trekking to Pilsen, it's going to be for Mexican food. But the Old Town location will work, although it doesn't have seating. And when I go back, I'll do my best to make sure it's between 4:00 and 5:00 on Monday through Thursday because that's when Bob's has a buy one pizza get one free happy hour special.