Five Squared Pizza [Meeting #132]

Five Squared Pizza

1332 N Halsted Street (Map)
Chicago, IL 60642
(224) 595-5781

CPC invaded the Five Squared Pizza Pop-Up Residency at Off Color Brewing on Thursday, November 30, 2023.

The Chicago Pizza Club met at Off Color Brewing for the second time, which is strange because they don't serve pizza. But they do have excellent beer. The first time we went, we took advantage of their BYOF policy by bringing in some outstanding pizza from nearby Pizzeria Bebu (RIP) which was always too crowded for a decent sized CPC meeting and that meeting was a big one. This time, we were drawn back thanks to a pop-up from Five Squared Pizza, a carry-out and delivery only Detroit style pizzeria nearby. The pizzas were pre-cooked at Five Squared and then reheated to order at Off Color in a small oven. Thanks to the amount of oil in a Detroit pizza crust, this is a style suited particularly well to reheating so I don't think much was lost at all.

There were 6 pizzas on the menu that night and there were six CPC members in attendance. Pizzas were sold as slices rather than whole pies (though there was a discount if you ordered in multiples of 4 (the size of a full pizza). That was good and bad for us. The good news was that we didn't have to order 6 whole pies to try them all. The bad news is I decided we needed 3 of each of the 6 so everyone could have a half of every slice and then we added 2 extra slices because that got us to multiples of 4 and we like a deal. This wasn't bad because the pizza was bad (it wasn't); this was bad because Detroit pizza is really filling and we ended up with 8 full slices of extra pizza, 40% of our order.

Tie Dye (Vegetarian) - red sauce, vodka sauce, house basil pesto, pecorino romano. This was the unanimous best pizza of the night. Just kidding. I know I thought it was the best and I know Stander disagreed. I can't remember what anyone else thought but this was definitely the best.

Upside Down / Cheese (Vegetarian) - sliced grande mozz, Sclafani crushed tomatoes, pecorino, olive oil. This simple one was also really delicious. 

Prince St - sliced grande mozz, arrabbiata sauce, ezzo cup & char pepperoni, pecorino romano. Presumably named after the excellent pizzeria in New York that made the thick square cut charred pepperoni pizza popular. So good, in fact, that the place survived the owner being outed as a racist piece of shit. The pizza at Prince Street is better than the pizza at Five Squared, but the people at Five Squared are better people. And this was a very good slice of pizza so Five Squared gets the win.

Carnivore - bacon jam, crumbled hot italian sausage, ezzo pepperoni, parmigiano reggiano, red sauce. I would've thought this one would be the best bust something about the mix of meats piled on top of each other didn't work. Also, with all that meat, this one was screaming out for more of the very good sauce. The thick, oily crust could definitely handle it.

Spinach & Artichoke (Vegetarian) - creamy spinach & artichoke sauce. This was tasty but I prefer spinach and artichoke dip be left as a dip and not on a pizza. But Artichoke Basille's built a mini empire on a similar concept, so this is definitely going to be some people's jam.

Spacca - pistachio cream sauce, crumbled italian sausage, burrata, fresh basil, mike's hot honey. Tasted zero honey but I don't think that would have made a difference. This one wasn't for me. El Pres liked it a lot though.

Good crumb, bad picture

This is a good Detroit crust. Good crust with good toppings makes for good pizza. It was a good night.

There were leftovers

After more than 3 years, it looks like we may have another dog CPC member. Time will tell. This is Phranklin and, while he ate hit full bite (I didn't give him the full slice since I'm easing him into people food/testing the limits of his stomach), he didn't seem overly enthusiastic about it.