BYOP Emergency Coronavirus Meeting [Meeting #120]

This is not what Lincoln Avenue is supposed to look like at 6:00 on a Saturday night

CPC invaded our own homes on Saturday, March 28, 2020.

In the US of A, pizza is a communal food, typically served in sizes way too big to eaten alone and served pre-cut so that groups of people can easily dive in and spend some time with one another over a shared plate of food.

The enthusiastically rejuvenated Chicago Pizza Club has had two wildly successful meetings in the last couple months after taking a nearly 4-year break and we were all eager to get back together. But thanks to the virus that has been ravaging the world, that seemed impossible. Undeterred, we decided that if couldn't break bread while physically together, we could do it virtually.



We ended up having our best attended meeting in years, with members joining in from throughout Chicagoland as well as Indiana, Michigan, and New Jersey. It was also the longest meeting in CPC history, clocking in at around 3 hours and 45 minutes.

Hilarious WebEx shenanigans

Because we were on our own, we obviously got pizzas from a variety of locations. Here's how it went down:



Adam was the only member to bring a new pizzeria into the fold during the Quarantine Meeting. In Crown Point, Indiana, the options are limited and he went with Rosati's.

Adam was the only member who provided a detailed write-up of his pie.

I, and the 5- and 7- year old fellas ate the 18"-ish pizza.  I will echo what Christian said about the sauce and expound a bit...most pizza around us here in Crown Point seems to be slightly to significantly sweet...Gelsosomo's, Aurelio's, Pizza Cellar...all fairly sweet to some degree.  I prefer what Rosati's does and leaves the sweetness behind in favor of more tomato/acidity/salt/etc.  Also, I agree that the sausage was decent quality...no Pequod's or Pizano's, but did the trick.  Cheese was fine...nothing particularly remarkable to me there.  Crust was nice - seemed as thick as they needed to make it possible to eat by hand and stay together...nice and bready with typical cracker flavor and light char here and there...a tad extra char might've made me happier.  Overall, it's been my favorite offering here in NW Indiana where I've been sentenced to live out the foreseeable remainder of my existence (just kidding NWI peeps...we'll work on turning our misguided neighbors around).

I'd say we can give Rosati's a 6.75 out of 10.







The family of Adam also got a gluten free Rosati's and here's some info on that one: I did not eat the gluten-free one, but my wife, Christian, and 3-year-old did, and her response was such: "The crust was good!  It wasn't gummy or limp like other crusts can be.  The sausage had great flavor and wasn't "gristley," and the sauce was savory.  The cheese also seemed pretty high-quality with a high fat content."  I can't remember how much the 10" pizza was, but heads up if you're unfamiliar: usually GF pizza is, like, 3 times the cost per square foot than standard, more-delicious-gluten-containing pizza.











I went to Pat's which was it's usual magnificent self. I'm not sure why this place isn't talked about more. For my money, they're making the best Midwestern thin crust pizza in city limits. Here's the review from our meeting at Pat's 12 years ago.



Phred usually makes his appearance at the end of these posts since he doesn't get to attend the meetings and just weighs in on leftovers. Because he's quarantined with me, he got to participate this time. He loved Pat's but was kind of useless as an attendee, spending most of the meeting sleeping and whining for more pizza when awake.





Those of us who joined the CPC in the blogging era have never shared pizza with Conor before. She left Chicago long before I joined CPC, but as one of the oldest members, she has more street cred than I do. Well, she did before she showed up with Domino's. I kid. We've done Domino's at CPC before and the fact is that while some of our favorite pizzerias probably won't survive Corona, Domino's absolutely will. Conor's daughter also joined us as a first-time Pizza Club participant. Hopefully this virtual meeting will inspire Conor to come to her first physical CPC meeting in 17+ years once this pandemic is over.





The Kims cooked up a few frozen Home Run Inn pizzas (previously CPC'd 11 years ago) and doctored them up with a collection of condiments.













Andrew and Jen opted for a garlic, sausage and feta pizza from Roots, which we went to 10 years ago.





Not often I see someone get a toppings combo I've never even thought about before, but that's what happened here. Andrew says it was good.



But they also ordered toasted ravioli, so who knows what to think.

Jess didn't participate in the meeting but her food baby did

Stelios and Jess went with a spinach deep dish from D'Agostino's (one of the few twice visited CPC pizzerias, once before records were kept and once 14 years ago).





The fine people at D'Agostino's threw in a giant thin crust slice for free because Stelios, as is appropriate for at least as long as the quarantine lasts, tipped extra generously.



Stander fully embraced the quarantined CPC spirit by ordering Little Caesar's (same meeting as Domino's) and making her own dessert pizzas.















El Pres was late to the meeting but made up for it by coming in strong with his pizza game. The Quinteros/Donahoe family brought home two pizzas from Pequod's (previously reviewed here). The adults had pepperoni, garlic, onion, mushroom, and extra sauce (plus Italian beef on half) and the kids had meatball, mushroom and onion.











The Daily family checked in from Michigan with frozen pizza from Costco (never reviewed by the CPC!) and a homemade flatbread pizza of some sort for the kids. No pics of any of them, but what are you going to do. It was a joy to welcome them back for their first CPC meeting in years.

All in all, this was a fantastic meeting of the Chicago Pizza Club. We're all bored out of our minds these days and this was a great excuse to hang out together for the first time in what feels like years. We might have to do it again real soon.

Roots Handmade Pizza [Meeting #107]

Roots Handmade Pizza
1924 W. Chicago Avenue (Google Maps)
Chicago, IL 60622
(773) 645-4949

CPC invaded Roots Handmade Pizza on February 7. 2010.

Deep dish; stuffed; Neapolitan; New York; New Haven; Midwestern thin crust. What do all of those pizza styles have in common? Every respectable pizza aficionado knows what they're all about. Now what about Quad Cities style? Ever heard of it? Do you know where the Quad Cities are? Do you know how many cities are in the Quad Cities?

First, the easy answers. There are actually five cities in the Quad Cities and they are on the Illinois and Iowa sides of the Mississippi River. I've been there twice, once to witness the 1997 Great American Bash and once a couple years later for a girl. I finally outgrew wrestling and the girl is married. And because I failed to get pizza on either visit and I may never get back to the area, the possibility exists that I wouldn't have gotten to try Quad Cities style pizza were it not for Roots Handmade Pizza.

That brings me to the other questions: Yes, the Quad Cities have developed their own pizza style. It's basically regular thin crust pizza but with the twist of having malt in the crust. The malt makes the crust a bit more yeasty than is found on the average pizza and supposedly is responsible for some extra chewiness.

Anyhow, on to the food...

While the Pizza Clubbers are typically just a pizza-eating crowd when we gather together, the mozzarella sticks at Roots are an absolute requirement. At $9 for 5 of them, these are certainly the priciest mozzarella sticks any of us have encountered. I'll let everyone else speak for themselves, but I'd say they are also the best. Crafted from housemade mozzarella and covered with a crisp and well-seasoned/salty batter, these might actually be worth the price.

For the pizzas themselves, we ordered one with sausage and one taco pizza, two choices that went over very well with 6 1/4 CPC members who came to the meeting. At the end of the meal, we'd inhaled both pies.

I'll start with the sausage because, well, the sausage itself is freaking outstanding. The crumbled bits sausage covered virtually every single inch of the pizza and were loaded with fennel and pepper. The mozzarella was laid on thick and the sauce was pretty sparse, but while less of the former and more of the latter would have been nice, neither thing mattered because that pork was so good.

Taco pizza is apparently a thing in the Quad Cities. And the CPC is no stranger to taco pizzas, having had them at Meeting 31 (Barcello's), Meeting 41 (Michael's), Meeting 45 (Pete's Pizza), Meeting 56 (Pat's Pizza), Meeting 65 (Aurelio's), and Meeting 81 (John's Pizza Ristorante & Lounge). I love Pat's and I didn't go to every single one of those meetings that included taco pizzas, but if there's a better example of this delicacy in Chicago, I've never had it.

Everything about the taco pizza looks and sounds like a bad idea. It's got iceberg lettuce, cheese, beans, sausage, and, even cheesy tortilla chips (consensus was they were inferior to Doritos). Oh, you also get an unlimited supply of packets of taco sauce to go with the thing, something we took full advantage of. Despite the potential for this being nothing more than a silly gimmick, this was one outstanding pizza. And there's no question the extra chewy crust was key to standing up to the mess of toppings on this one.

One little detail of note to all the baseball fans out there: Roots has a couple of baseball connections courtesy of some of the people who invested in co-owners Greg Mohr (QC native) and Scott Weiner pizza venture. The Ricketts family, current overseers of the transformation of the Cubs, put some money into the place. People who, like me, pay far too much attention to these things might remember that Tom Ricketts and the Cubs Wonderboy General Manager watched a World Series game at Fifty/50. Well, that's co-owner Mohr's other restaurant (and their wings will apparently be available at Wrigley Field this year). The other baseball tie is that Yankees outfielder (and Chicago native) Curtis Granderson is also an investor in the place and he even brings some of his Yankee friends over for pizza dinner from time to time when they're in town slapping around the White Sox.