Bungalow by Middle Brow [Meeting #131]

Bungalow by Middle Brow

2840 W Armitage Ave (Map)
Chicago, IL 60647
(773) 687-9076

CPC invaded Bungalow by Middle Brow on Saturday, September 16 and again on Tuesday, September 26, 2023.

Fresh off the first two meetings in one night move in Chicago Pizza Club History (Meeting #129 and #130), we pulled off another first in our 20-year history - one meeting spread over 2 nights. We didn't do this because of turnout issues. In fact, our 14-person showing on Saturday, September 16 was our biggest in ages and our 7-person turnout on Tuesday, September 26 was more than respectable (total of 16 different members participated). We did this because Bungalow by Middle Brow has a totally different pizza menu on Tuesdays and we believe in thoroughness. And we also believe in deliciousness.

For Part 1 of the meeting, we went to Middle Brow for their regular pizza menu. With a group of 14 people, ordering was easy. There are 10 pizzas on the menu (not including the kids' cheese one) so we ordered them all. But first, in a CPC rarity, we also got some appetizers. We'll take a quick look at those first.

Marinated olive mix with sherry soaked tart cherries. Verdict: Yummy.

Bread with eggplant dip, smoked grapes, and mint; pesto butter pistachio + herbs; sardines.

That's some excellent sourdough bread. Toppings were fine (pesto butter) to very good (eggplant dip with grapes). The key here is the bread. These guys are outstanding at it. So guess what happens when you take the kind of bread skills that result in a nice crusty exterior and soft slightly tangy interior and cover it up with a variety of quality toppings and some creative flavor combinations? You get some goddamned good pizza. Here's the rundown:

Honey roasted peaches, corn, aged gouda, nduja vinaigrette

This was a fantastic start to the night. Summer on a pizza. Maybe could've used a little swine. Perhaps some small bits of guianciale? I guess that's the hole the nduja vinaigrette was trying to fill. Too much nitpicking. Would eat this pizza once a week, which is high praise from someone who thinks that 95% of pizzas should be required to have tomato sauce.

Soppressata, tomato, fermented hot pepper honey

Now here we go. Just a magnificent pie. Eleven CPC members weighed in on the topic and five of us picked this as the pizza of the night. Not a particularly unique pie among trendy pizzerias, but quality ingredients on a phenomenal crust (more on that later) and well cooked and you have something special.

Buttermilk, tropea onions, sungold tomatoes, goat tomme

This one was also quite nice but it was third one delivered to the table and the 8th pizza (out of 10) to be finished. Actually it was the last one to be finished. That's not a knock against it, but the competition was fierce. Roasted sungold tomatoes should be used on pizza more often.

Mushroom, cream sauce, caramelized onions, fontina, oyster mushrooms, chives. 

Mushrooms, more mushrooms, fontina, parmesan, caramelized onions. That's a lot of umami, which is Japanese for delicious.

Adult's cheese. They call it "the best cheese pizza in the city." They might be right. 

Ordering all 10 pizzas on the menu was doable. But if there had been 12 pizzas on the menu, we probably only would have ordered 8 or 9 and there's a good chance this one would have been cut. Not sure what cheeses they're using, but this thing was great. Earthy and tangy.

Margherita

I'm a fan of toppings but for many pizza snobs, this is the baseline for judging a pizza. If that were the case, then Middle Brow has nothing to worry about. Great crust, great cheese, bright and vibrant sauce. Definitely a winner.

Tempesta pepperoni, fresh mozzarella, tarragon

Tempesta products should get used more. This was a great, great pepperoni pizza. I'd have liked more sauce but what can you do. Definitely one of the crowd favorites

Sausage + olive

Another crowd favorite. I've never had olives diced this finely but it really makes sense. You get all that good olive flavor but it doesn't overwhelm any bites. It goes without saying since it's a good pizzeria and it's in Chicago, but the sausage was top notch.

eggplant + shishito, shaved garlic, yuzu oil, thai basil, mint

This vegan pizza was the loser of the night. Just didn't work at all. I tried out of an obligation to completeness but just no. Too much vegetation for one pizza. Also didn't work texturally thanks to all the liquid from the veggies. There were 3 pieces left of this one at the end of the night and the people who took it home ended up composting it

Red sauce + yuzu oil, shaved garlic, fresh oregano.

I actually liked this cheeseless pizza a lot but I'm a sucker for good sauce. It seems that the yuzu oil was not evenly applied because some people had bites where it overwhelmed while others of us didn't notice it at all on our slices. Definitely the winner of the vegan pizzas.

Crackly crusted sourdough

Blurry crust bottom

As you can guess from my description of the sourdough, the crust on these pizzas is absolutely fantastic. Would happily each the crust with absolutely nothing on it. 

It was just a great pizza night overall. I thought the real standouts were the Corn + peach, the sopressata and hot honey, the pepperoni and the sausage and olive.

Here was everyone's #1 choice:

• Andrew: Soppressata
• Jessica: Soppressata
• Stelios: Soppressata
• Francisco: Sausage and olive
• Kate: Mushroom
• AJ: Pepperoni
• Estela: Mushroom
• Amanda: Peach and corn
• Hugo: Adult cheese
• Felix: Soppressata
• Dan: Soppressata

There was dessert. It was pretty good. Not great. Panna cotta peach compote, poppy seed streusel, Thai basil.

Unfortunately it wasn't all positive. They've switched their focus from beer to natural wine. Four of us tried some. We didn't like it. That it was $15 a glass for what the wine snob among us assured me was a small pour made us a little angry. Fortunately, that was very early in the meal and the pizza more than made up for it.

It was a fantastic night, but we weren't done with this meeting yet.

I'd been to Middle Brow previously so I knew we were in for something great. And I also knew about their tavern style pizzas served only on Tuesday nights. I hadn't had it yet but given their skills and the widespread praise, I was confident enough that I already had a reservation made for an upcoming Tuesday when we met up. But I was worried not many people would want to come back so soon so I only made it for 4 people. At the end of the night, I had to double the reservation to 8.

Salad wasn't my choice but it was good. Turned out to be extra important because it took an hour for our cracker thin crust pizzas to start arriving at our table. In their defense, the place was packed. When I was checking in at 6:45, I heard the hostess tell a walk-in that they'd be able to sit but there wouldn't be enough pizza dough for them. It's not normally this crowded on Tuesdays but Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports/One Bite Pizza Reviews gave Middle Brow's tavern crust an 8.1 a couple of weeks ago and any time he gives a score above 8, his fans flock to the place. He has a lot of fans. Back to the delay - no idea how it could possibly take that long despite the crowds given how thin the pizza is, but who knows. I wouldn't have cared much at all but one member, who moved to Indiana and has a shitty schedule that has made him miss multiple CPC meetings despite him being one of the most enthusiastic members, had to leave before the pizza got there.

Pepperoni

Sausage

Cacio e pepe (weekly special)

Veggie

Cheese

Sucks for Adam because these pizzas were absolutely delicious. Crispy crust that stood up to all but the veggies; bite size squares that were almost as fun to eat as they were delicious; top quality toppings and ingredients; and a little creativity with the cacio e pepe.

But that sauce. Sweet Lord that sauce. The best tavern cut places cook the hell out of their tomato sauce/and or add tomato paste to bring out more umami and this place is no exception. But these guys take it a step further. I mentioned how good and rich the sauce was to our server who revealed that there's cheese in the sauce. I'm guessing it's parmesan because a) this sauce was an umami bomb in the best way and b) there was a very liberal sprinkling of parm on all the pizzas. I drank a whole lot of water when I got home.

I've got nothing left to say. The pictures, even the ones that my phone overdid it on when I used the autocorrect function to combat the darkness (we sat outside), tell the whole story. This is some ultra top tier tavern pizza.

So there you have it - an incredibly thorough two day meeting of the Chicago Pizza Club. We ate 15 pizzas. But just when you thought we did it all, it turns out there's a couple of pizzas on the brunch menu that aren't on the dinner menu. They seem to rotate at least a bit. The BLT pizza that was there last week has been replaced by a caramelized onion one with a whole lot of other things going on; but the chilaquiles pizza has been there a couple weeks in a row. Either way, looks like more research needs to be done.

I hate to end the review on a down note, but one detail worth mentioning is that there's an 8% charge added to all orders allegedly for the workers. Restaurants are doing this more and more now rather than increase prices, but 3% seems pretty standard. 8% is noticeable and annoying and leaves confusion about how much to tip since we don't know where the 8% goes (and we never know how tips are split). We, of course, added on a full 20% both times (might have been a little more), but it really would be better if they just raised the prices by 10% than add on an 8% fee which really just goes to the restaurant (how much it trickles down to employees is a mystery).

Dough Daddy's [Meeting #130]

Dough Daddy's

649 N Cass Ave (Map)
Westmont, IL 60559
(630) 963-1900

CPC invaded Dough Daddy's on Wednesday, March 29, 2023.

Anyone who made it through the overly verbose recap of the last meeting at Kim's Uncle Pizza knows that we drove out to Westmont twice to try that place. When our first attempt failed, we got the sweet consolation prize of heading over to Katy's Dumplings for arguably the finest Chinese food in Chicagoland. And when that happened, we discovered a place called Dough Daddy's in the same little strip mall. We'd never heard of it but online reviews were promising. It's carry out only so our plan was to eat at Katy's and then grab a pie when we were done. That was a silly plan because nobody leaves Katy's who isn't stuffed beyond belief.

But when we headed back west for the meeting at Kim's Uncle, we decided to reward ourselves with a Chicago Pizza Club first - two meetings in one night!

Our order at Dough Daddy's was limited to one pizza because we had already eaten a whole lot of pizza at Kim's Uncle. And because we had our two newest members with us, aged 12 and 10, we kept our order simple with mushroom on the whole thing and sausage on half.

So to recap, here were all the things working against Dough Daddy's that night: 1) we were full; 2) we had just eaten some of the best thin crust pizza available anywhere in the Chicago area; 3) we had to eat it in our car because they're carry out and delivery only; and 4) we only got to try one pizza. Despite all of that, we loved this pizza.

The crust is crisp. The edges were downright crunchy but the rest, while not on par with Kim's Uncle or Pat's, was crisp enough that it wouldn't survive being folded if cut into triangles and handed to a New Yorker. It does what these crusts are supposed to do - hold the cheese, sauce and toppings and provide some textural contrast. Speaking of texture, the Dough Daddy crust gets a little extra thanks to the coating of corn meal on the bottom.

Where this pizza really shines is the same place so many other thin crust joints across Chicagoland stand out - the sauce and the housemade sausage. The sauce is packed with a rich tomato flavor and the large hunks of sausage are loaded with fennel and garlic. The cheese seemed to be standard low moisture mozzarella, which is to say it was good.

I can't help compare this to Kim's Uncle since we had it the same day. Kim's Uncle was definitely better thanks to the thinner and crisper crust and the higher quality toppings, but the quality of this strip mall take out only place only drives home my reluctance to return to Kim's Uncle. We're so spoiled in Chicago (and, apparently, Westmont) that a place at good as Dough Daddy's is one of dozens that fall into the broad category of "pizzerias that would stand out in other parts of the country but in Chicagoland won't merit a return visit because there are so many other places serving the same style of pizza that's just as good but is much closer to my house."

Kim's Uncle Pizza [Meeting #129]

Kim's Uncle Pizza

207 N Cass Ave (Map)
Westmont, IL 60559
(630) 963-1900

CPC invaded Kim's Uncle Pizza on Wednesday, March 29, 2023.

Back in the glory days of the Chicago Pizza Club, we met every couple of months. As people moved away, got busier with work and had children, meetings grew less and less frequent. But my friends we may have turned a corner! After meeting just one month ago, someone other than me pushed a meeting for the first time in at least a decade. Pizza Kate is back! Let's hope it continues. And with the induction of our two newest members AKA Kate's kids, I'm hopeful it will. (While this was the formal induction, Cora has been attending CPC meetings since August 2013 at Reno when she was 7 months old and Estela has been coming since she was 2 months old at Castel Gandolfo in July 2010).

Kim's Uncle Pizza inspired a lot of thoughts about so-called tavern pizza, many of which are barely related. So this review is going to long, disjointed and unedited. I apologize to nobody. 

But I don't want the most important thing to be buried. Kim's Uncle Pizza, a new pizzeria in Westmont, IL, is making truly outstanding old school Midwestern thin crust pizza. I can't say it's the best based on one visit, but I'm confident it's in the conversation. The rich tomato sauce is great, the toppings are top notch across the board and generously applied, and the crust, usually a weakness for the style, is one of the better ones around. That's really all that matters at the end of the day so feel free to stop reading here. Or skip to the end where the pictures and detailed descriptions are. Here come the many digressions.

Tavern cut pizza is having it's national moment and there's a lot of misinformation out there

1) Tavern cut is a recently made up name. I suppose some people might have used it a while ago, but it wasn't widespread at all. Until pizza obsessives made pizza the subject of a national food discourse, we just called it thin crust and it was cut in squares just because that's the way it's been done for decades. In Chicago and much of the Midwest, thin crust is tavern cut and tavern cut is thin crust.

2) Chicago is not the only place that has tavern cut pizza and there's no reason to think it was invented here. I've personally had tavern cut thin crust pizza from decades-old places in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri and Nebraska. And I know there are places as far east as western New York. That's a wide swath of the country. I'm about as big a Chicago partisan as there is and it's clear that calling this a uniquely Chicago style or even naming it after Chicago as some are doing, is absurd. 

3) There is no definitive version of the style. While most people who've spent a lot of time tasting different thin crust pizzas in Chicago (including me) agree that the best versions have a really thin cracker crust, the fact is that most places are closer to regular thickness thin crust and crumbly more than crackery. 

4) The reason texture is so critical in differentiating between pizzas in this style is that the crust exists to function as an edible plate and to add texture. Crisper crusts add more textural contrast.

5) One thing that these crusts don't do, even in the top places like Vito & Nick's and Pat's and Villa Nova and, yes, Kim's Uncle, is add much in terms of flavor. I'd happily eat the crust from George's or Labriola or Spacca Napoli as a plain piece of bread. The same cannot be said for any traditional Midwestern thin crust pizza. 

6) Since the flavor of the crust doesn't matter and every place uses relatively similar shredded low moisture mozzarella, the key to great thin crust pizza in this style is the sauce and the toppings. And in those two categories, there are a ton of thin crust places in Chicago that excel. There are plenty of mediocre places that are making fantastic Italian sausage and there are probably dozens of places that make a fantastic tomato sauce loaded with umami (either thanks to slow cooking sauce for hours longer than is standard on other styles of pizza and/or adding flavor boosters like tomato paste).

7) The idea that thin crust is the "real Chicago style pizza" and that deep dish is for tourists is unadulterated bullshit. There are certainly parts of the city, most notably the white portions of the south side, where this style has been the local go-to for decades. But deep dish and some of it's offshoots have been wildly popular for decades in neighborhoods far off the tourist beat. Uno's and Due's and Gino's East thrived in downtown long before culinary exploration was a central part of tourism. Lou Malnati's, which is without question the most successful deep dish chain, started in Lincolnwood, was primarily a suburban mini-chain for more than 20 years (started in 1971 and by 1984 had five locations, just one of which was in the city). Today, Malnati's has dozens of locations all over the Chicago area and only a small handful are in areas tourists go to. Pequod's and Burt's both started in Morton Grove; Gulliver's (RIP) was in West Ridge; and while Pizano's opened downtown, it was on a stretch of State Street that was definitely not tourist central. And the hottest new places on the deep dish scene are nowhere near downtown or any other tourist destination. George's Deep Dish is in Edgewater, Milly's Pizza in the Pan is in Uptown; and Uncle Jerry's Pizza Company is in bumblefuck Cary, IL. Seriously, if you take nothing else from this post, make it this: if anyone tells you that deep dish pizza is only for tourists or something "real Chicagoans" rarely eat, know that you are talking to someone who genuinely has no clue what the fuck they're talking about.

8) Nobody knows the full history of thin crust pizza in Chicago and they probably never will. In today's pizza (and food) obsessed world, it's natural that the chroniclers out there want there to be neat narratives. The problem with that is that in many cases, including the world of Chicago thin crust, you're talking about something that developed entirely organically and without rules from longstanding traditions or culinary school and during a time when people ate food without feeling the need to pontificate or memorialize. The recent New York Times piece states as fact that "the cheap-to-produce, thirst-inducing style was invented to encourage customers to linger long enough to order another beer." It's a cute narrative but there's a reason why the Times doesn't offer a single shred of evidence to support the claim: there isn't any. 

Ultimately, none of this matters; what matters is whether the places making square cut thin crust pizza are making something delicious. And in the case of Kim's Uncle, they definitely are. And with that, we now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

The Review

Before Kim's Uncle, there was Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream. Before Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream, there was Eat Free Pizza. Here's the short history: A few friends started obsessively making pizza with the hope of one day opening a brick and mortar place. As they got good at it, they practiced pizza making and viral marketing by giving out free pizza via Instagram. This got them enough of a following they were able to open Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream in Bridgeport in March 2020. People raved about it. The Chicago Pizza Club finally made it there in July 2022. It was good but not great. The sauce was very good and the toppings they had were top notch, but the crust wasn't all that crisp and for the first time in a life that has had me eating sausage pizza in literally hundreds of places, I was at a place that ran out of sausage (and we were there before the dinner rush). At the time, they had just opened Kim's Uncle and a few months later announced they were closing Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream. I suspect (by which I mean I'm virtually certain) what happened is the owners shifted their focus to the new place and their workers weren't nearly as committed to quality and the product suffered as a result. Running two restaurants is exponentially harder than running one.

The raves about the new place couldn't be ignored and when the aforementioned Times piece sang the Kim's Uncle's praises, Kate proposed a meeting and I, of course, jumped at the idea. And so it was that on Saturday, March 18, we headed to Westmont for an impromptu CPC meeting. What's that, you say? I've already said the meeting was on March 29? You are correct, dear reader. Let me tell you a story about some genuinely fucked up customer service. It's not mentioned anywhere on Kim's Uncle's website, but the way to get their pizza is to call the day you want to go and place an order for a time slot that night. I repeat: this information is not on their website. It's also not on their Instagram. They are fully aware of their reputation and fully aware they were featured in the New York Times. They have to know people are going to make the drive from Chicago. Westmost is a long way away. 45 minutes or more each way from anywhere east of Western Avenue. When we got there at 5:45, we were told we wouldn't be able to get a pizza until 8:15. I'd gotten over it, but writing this now has me enraged again. There's no excuse for that. This is a company that was built on social media. They know how to get the word out. 

Anyhow, because Westmont is also home to Katy's Dumplings, we still had a wildly successful evening. And because we were eager to try the pizza and now knew the rules, we made the decision to go back just a week and a half later. I called multiple times early that afternoon until someone picked up a little after 3:00.

My persistence paid off and, pizza friends, I'm happy to report that despite all the frustration, with our first bites of pizza at Kim's Uncle, we knew we made the right decision. Side note: it's a good thing we were a small group as the restaurant only has two four-person booths inside that are on opposite sides of the restaurant and one table outside.

There were just five participants in this meeting, one of whom only got leftovers. But the reviews were universal: Kim's Uncle Pizza is absolutely fantastic. If it weren't for a couple of twists like a sprinkle of fresh parm and a couple of toppings like Mike's hot honey, you'd swear you were eating pizza from people who have been doing it right for decades.   

At the Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream meeting, we had a spicy sopressata, garlic and Mike's hot honey pizza. I said in that review that it was my first time having that combo and that I absolutely loved it. Same ingredients but on a perfectly cooked pizza with a quality cracker crust and it was, not surprisingly, even better this time around.

One bite into the sausage on the half sausage/half sausage and giardiniera pizza and I was blown away. Chicago is blessed with a litany of pizzerias with fantastic sausage and this stuff is on par with the absolute best of the bunch. An absolute flavor explosion of fennelly and peppery pork. Normally I'm not a fan of giardiniera on high quality pizza because I worry it will overwhelm everything but the sausage and the intense tomato sauce were able to handle the JP Graziano's giardiniera with no problems. I'm not sure which half of this pie I liked better but both were stellar.

Like the other two pizzas, the mushroom pie was loaded with quality toppings and cooked perfectly. There was a bit too much oregano for my tastes, but I'm not sure if they added too much or if it was the regular amount in the sauce and it came through a lot more because of the less flavorful toppings. Either way, I think this was just a one-off heavy hand. To be clear, this quibble is not a major one. I would have happily eaten the entire pizza.

So there you have it: Kim's Uncle is officially one of the best places in Chicagoland for the kind of old school thin crust pizza people in the know have been raving about for years and the coasts are just learning to appreciate. Every pizza fan in Chicago should try it at least once. Whether it's worth a return drive way the hell out to Westmont is something I've been thinking about a lot for the last week. Let me put it this way: Katy's is my favorite Chinese restaurant in Chicagoland and I only get there about once a year. So it's not a knock on Kim's Uncle if I never go back; it's just the practical reality that there are so many great places for pizza that are so much more conveniently located, that I might not and it definitely won't be in my regular rotation. That being said, I'm very much liking the idea of getting some Dan Dan Noodles and cold Szechuan noodles at Katy's and following it up with a pizza or two from Kim's Uncle and having one amazing two-part meal in Westmont followed by a few meals of leftovers in Chicago. But it won't happen any time soon and it definitely won't happen until they implement a reasonable system for placing orders.

Millys Pizza in the Pan [Meeting #128]

Milly's Pizza In The Pan

1005 W Argyle Street (Map)
Chicago, IL 60640
(224) 656-4732

CPC invaded Milly's Pizza in the Pan on Sunday, February 26, 2023.

Dalton ("just Dalton") and Robert Maleski: Two Kings of Customer Service (Photo credits: Swayze and Maleski)

"Be nice." So simple, so effective. 

Anyone who's been paying attention to pizza in Chicago in the last couple of years is well aware of Milly's reputation as one of the best deep dish pizzerias around. It's entirely deserved and we'll get to that. But first let me tell you a little story. Milly's has a limited production capacity so you really do need to order ahead of time. I placed our initial order for two pizzas for 5:45 on Sunday. They have limited seating (four 4-tops and 4 stools at a counter in the front window) and don't take reservations but we correctly assumed we'd be fine early on a Sunday night. I emailed the restaurant to ask if they sold drinks and, if not, if they allow outside drinks. Half an hour later, owner Robert Maleski wrote me back to let me know they sold non-alcoholic drinks and they were BYOB. Very nice.

They set up a serving area for us. Very, very nice.

A couple of days later, a CPC member asked about adding two guests to our group. That was fine but it meant adding a pizza to our order. Problem: The next available time slot was 6:15. I placed the order, figuring we could eat two and then have the third when it was ready. But I emailed the owner and let him know what was going on and within 15 minutes, he'd made room for our third pie at 5:45. Even nicer.

The menu at Milly's has 5 pre-set toppings combinations as well as a build your own option. We ordered three pizzas for 7 adults and 3 children. All were excellent. 

My favorite pizza of the night had pepperoni and peppadew peppers, always a good combination and even better when the pepperoni gets those beautiful crispy edges.

Coming in a close second was the sausage and mushroom (technically mushroom was only on half of it but I can only speak to the mushroom one). Look at that sausage - top quality stuff.

The first two were build your own pizzas. In third place but still delicious was the Que Suerte, which comes with pineapple, cherry tomatoes, jalapeño & bacon.

The first thing that jumps out when looking at a Milly's pizza (once you get beyond the general beauty of all of them) is the caramelized crust. Originally made famous by Burt Katz, first at Pequod's and then at Burt's Place, when done right, the crunchy blackened cheese is an absolute treat. Milly's does it right and they do it right consistently. They did it back when they were operating out of a ghost kitchen in Humboldt Park (Maleski opened Milly's after being laid off from his job as a server during the pandemic) and they're doing it now in their brick and mortar location in Uptown. Basically, this is what you should get when you want a better version of Pequod's - this is better in every single way.

But it's not just the caramelized bits that make the crust stand out, it's the fact that, like Burt's back when Burt was still alive and decidedly unlike Pequod's, the crust at Milly's would be delicious with absolutely nothing on it - it's great bread.

The toppings were top notch across the board. Well, the pineapple was just regular canned pineapple, but everything else was great. The sauce had a real depth of flavor and a rich texture - really good stuff. The only criticism I have is that the toppings don't need to be applied with such a restrained hand, but that's how Burt did it and it's how plenty of Neapolitan places do it, so I'm willing to accept that's my American gluttony talking - these pizzas certainly weren't hurting for flavor.

Bottom line: along with George's and Labriola, this is one of the three best deep dish pizzas in Chicagoland and therefore the world.

Milly's doesn't sell dessert. But right next door is Don Pablos Kitchen & Bakeshop, an excellent Chilean empanada shop that does have some sweets, including delicious alfajores.

Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream [Meeting #127]

Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream

964 W 31st Street (Map)
Chicago, IL 60608
(773) 565-4192

CPC invaded Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream on Saturday, July 16, 2022.

The story behind the pizza part of Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream is pretty cool. Two longtime friends and the fiancé of one of them joined forces to create Eat Free Pizza, through which they gave out free pizza and beer one night a week via Instagram. Check out the back story here. The combination of working on their craft and getting a boatload of social media and real media love enabled them to open up a permanent home in Bridgeport that they share with Kimski (next door) for fried chicken and Pretty Cool Ice Cream (Logan Square) for ice cream pops.

They've gotten a ton of praise since then and have expanded to long-term pop-ups (like the one currently at Marz) and just opened a second permanent location in Westmont, Kim's Uncle Pizza. Esquire even named it one of the best new restaurants in America in 2020. Now we've got to pump the brakes a little bit. Given that Pizza Friendly Pizza, Professor Pizza, and Milly's Pizza In The Pan all opened in Chicago 2020 and are all significantly better than PFCIC, the idea that this is one of the best new restaurants in the country is batshit crazy. Either that or the fried chicken is life-changing, in which case I need to get back ASAP.

In a CPC first, we actually began our meeting with something from a different pizzeria than the one we were meeting at. Stelios is currently between homes (pro tip: don't sell your condo months before the house you're building is ready) and is living on the far south side, minutes away from Chicago tavern style legend Vito & Nick's. Since we knew we'd be eating on an outdoor patio at Maria's, we got him to bring us a sausage pie from Vito & Nick's.

Good Lord, even at room temperature, this is just a fantastic pie. And that fennel-packed sausage just oozes Chicago pizza vibes. Magical.

Back in my prolific pizza eating days when I wrote for Serious Eats, I occasionally got into debates with the pizza nerds who were appalled that I firmly believed that a pizza could be great even with a mediocre crust. Exhibit A were the many great tavern crust places throughout Chicago and the Midwest. That being said, the three tavern crust pizzas that were truly special - Vito & Nick's, Pat's, and Villa Nova, all had crusts that were a cut above.

The pizza at Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream does not have a special crust. It's fine, but it's effectively just an edible plate. I would have liked it to be crisper (the edges were great) but nobody else seemed to agree with me.

The toppings are a different story. The ones we had were top notch. We were not able to try their sausage because for the first time in visiting literally hundreds of pizzerias in Chicago, I encountered a place that was sold out of sausage. This wasn't a case of them running out late at night - they sent all of their sausage (an ingredient that's incredibly easy to buy or make) to their pop-up at Marz. Truly baffling. And by baffling, I mean stupid.

Bitter old man grumpiness aside, as I said, the toppings we had were great. One pizza was pepperoni and mushroom and the other was spicy sopressata, garlic and Mike's hot honey. Everything was high quality and they didn't hold back in piling them on. And that latter combo, one I haven't had before, was a gamechanger that I will be trying again multiple times at multiple pizzerias.

All in all, this was good stuff. I had really high hopes that weren't met, but that just means this isn't destination pizza. If I lived in the neighborhood (won't happen) or they opened a location in my neighborhood (seems unlikely), I'd be absolutely thrilled to have this as a regular stop.

The obvious plan was to have some of Pretty Cool Ice Cream's excellent ice cream pops at the end of the meal. But we all live a whole lot closer to their north side locations than we do to Mario's so the genius decision was made to go there instead since we were relatively close, or at least a lot closer than any of us normally are. It was a good call.

Tavern style pizza and Italian lemonade. Now that's a fine Chicago summer night.