Zarella Pizzeria & Taverna [Meeting #139]

Zarella Pizzeria & Taverna

531 N Wells St (Map)
Chicago, IL 60654
(312) 470-0250

CPC invaded Zarella on Tueday, July 16, 2025.

Zarella doesn't need any more hype. Between the picture perfect pies and the Boka PR machine and the downtown location, it's packed every night and probably will be for a while. But the question we needed to answer is whether it should be. The shorter answer: Everything is delicious so sure, why not. The slightly longer answer: If you live downtown or have out of town guests staying in a downtown hotel who don't want to travel far, you can go here and have an excellent meal with great service. But, and maybe I was biased because I went in knowing this was a Boka restaurant and not the more appealing story of some longtime pizza obsessive finally getting to do their thing or a multi-generation family business, but there's something sterile about the whole experience that left me thinking there's a pretty good chance I won't go back. But but: I've already recommended this place to a couple of people. 

The three biggest pizza trends going these days have to be Midwestern thin aka Chicago thin aka tavern; so-called "artisanal pizza;" and Detroit style. One Detroit pizza goes a long way so it's not going to be as big of a profit center as the other two styles and Boka knows how to make money. And that, I suspect, is why they've skipped Detroit style and focused on the other two. 

This isn't the best artisanal pizza around - Great Lake (welcome back!), Middle Brow, and a few others are better. And it's not the best tavern style around - Pat's, Vito & Nick's, Villa Nova, and several others are better. But Zarella does a very good job of both and not a lot of places can make that claim. 

The "artisanal" pizza is a picture perfect pizza. Nice crisp and chewy crusts and good ingredients. Even the basic margherita, which we never get, was delicious. The prettier pizza is one of their signature pies - Soppressata & Mortadella with Calabrian chili honey and arugula. The crust might not have had the same depth of flavor of some of the best spots in town, but honestly, I'm probably overselling the "flaw." Really good stuff.

The tavern looks and tastes like Boka hired a consultant who read that NY Times article that made the rounds a couple years ago. But here's the thing - while a lot of the grand pronouncements in that article were bullshit. it got a lot right and this whole cold cured crust, sauce to the edges, and high quality ingredients is a great formula and Boka executes it well. They probably could have used more sauce, but that's more because they were generous with the toppings a little more sauce would have balanced things out a bit. The pics: Top pizza is pepperoni and mushroom, second pizza is sausage and mushroom, and the bottom one is pepperoni, garlic and onion. Everything about these pizzas was very good to great. 

A couple of notes on service. As mentioned earlier, this is a Boka Group restaurant and those mofos, whose many accolades include the 2019 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur, know what they're doing. Service was great throughout. They did mess up one pizza (we didn't order the pepperoni and mushroom), let us keep the mistake, and promptly brought the right one. One cool feature is rather than cluttering up your table with your leftovers, they give you a claim check and then you pick up your pizza when you're on your way out of the restaurant. One thing to look out for. These have a little block on the table with a QR code to pay your bill. If you go that route, there's an extra $4 platform fee. Fuck that shit. Ask your server for a bill the old fashioned way and you don't have to pay the $4. 

Novel Pizza Cafe [Meeting #138]

Novel Pizza Cafe

1759 W. 19th Street (Map)
Chicago, IL 60625
No phone it seems

CPC invaded Novel Pizza Cafe on Sunday, June 8, 2025.

Here's a secret: For our last meeting, we were actually planning on going to Novel Pizza Cafe and not Bob's but only made the last minute switch because we realized that Novel wasn't open on Sundays and we needed a place that opened at 11:00 AM. Here's another secret, this time, our plan was to go to Zarella, the hot new place from the Boka Group but we couldn't get enough people to make it worth it. So with Novel still on the brain and the fact that they are now open on Sundays, we returned to Pilsen for the second meeting in a row.

There were four of us at the meeting but two eagerly awaiting leftovers, so we got three pizzas, two thin crust and one pan. All were good, but the thin crust was the clear winner.

Virtually every single mention of Novel highlights the fact that it's the product of a Filipino-Mexican partnership. And for good reason. Only in America, baby! More on the restaurant and the owners here and here. There's not much Filipino or Mexican influence on the menu, which makes sense because neither country is exactly known for their pizza. One exception is the longanisa and giardiniera pie. If you only get one pizza here, this is the one to get. Frequently giardiniera overpowers pizzas, but that's definitely not the case here were the giardiniera isn't super spicy and it's balanced out really well by the sweet sausage. Here are some more pictures of that delicious pizza.

defying gravity 

Because one of our tween CPC members was with us and her palate hasn't developed yet, we got what Novel calls a margherita but definitely isn't a margherita, but it was solid. Spreading the dollops of ricotta on each slide before eating is this right move.

The crust was very sturdy but not particularly crisp - kind of a scientific marvel in that regard. There was also a notable cornmeal component. I'd rank the crust as better than the edible plate that is most common on Chicago thin crust pizzas, but not top tier. 

It seems that most people go to Novel for the thin crust. And if we weren't so committed to thoroughness, we'd have done that too. But we believe in thoroughness.

So, this is kind of a weird pizza. I suppose it's closest to Detroit but with a heavier, more focaccia-y crust. There's a ton of cheese and I'm still not sure what it is. I asked and, after checking with someone in the kitchen, the guy at the counter said it was a combination of mozzarella and cheddar. I'm unconvinced.it kind of tasted like saganaki, but I can't imagine they're using any Greek cheese in there. Anyhow, it was tasty but I can't imagine getting it again. I think it was the heaviest slice of pizza I've ever had. 

Final thoughts: Novel is good not great. If you live in Pilsen, it would be a very good regular spot. If you don't live in Pilsen, the longanisa and giardiniera pizza is worth going out of your way to try, but come on, if you're making a trip to Pilsen for food, 97 times out of 100, you should be getting Mexican food.

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.