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."