[Chicago Pizza News] GQ's Alan Richman Says Great Lake Offers Country's Best Pizza

Submitted by Marla Collins' Husband.

When I reviewed Andersonville's Great Lake for Slice, I was blown away by the quality of the ingredients and the crust. A combination of the restaurant's size (small) and the Pizza Club's reviewing process (we are rotating review-writing much more than in the past), we haven't held a meeting at Great Lake yet, though I know at least a couple of other members have been.

Well, it's now going to be even more difficult to get a table at Great Lake, which already demanded notoriously long waits. GQ's food critic, Alan Richman, just came out with a very thorough review of his top 25 pizzas in the United States. In conducting his research, Richman went to 109 pizzerias and sampled 386 pizzas.

Chicagoans should be skeptical of Richman's opinions on food after he wrote this asinine drivel about Chicago hot dogs last September, but the pizza article differs from the hot dog one considerably in that he clearly put a lot of thought into his work this time. Of course, like so many critics from outside of Chicago, Richman entirely dismisses deep dish and stuffed pizza, but that's so common among East Coast critics that it's not even worth getting worked up over. Still, when I read Richman's rankings of his top ten pizza cities and see that Chicago is fourth behind New York, San Francisco and Detroit, I have to question the man's sanity.