Labriola Cafe [Meeting #117]

Labriola Cafe
535 N. Michigan Avenue (Map)
Chicago, IL 60611
(312) 955-3100

CPC invaded Labriola Cafe on Saturday, March 13, 2016. 

What, you thought the Chicago Pizza Club was dead? Not yet, my friends.

We last met almost four years ago. Then most of us spent seven months focusing on the Cubs. You might've heard what happened. Then a festering piece of shit who advocates eating pizza with a knife and fork so he can avoid the crust and also advocates eating pizza crust first was actually elected President of the United States. The Chicago Pizza Club clings to the hope that this national nightmare is coming to an end this year so some normalcy can return to the world and we can return to the blogosphere. Fun fact: The CPC started before blogs were a thing and has now outlasted blogs being a thing.

Now let us turn to the last pizza club meeting, one that we all remember like it was yesterday thanks to some truly outstanding deep dish pizza. But first, some history. Chicago was very late to the bread renaissance. Today there are plenty of restaurants that make great bread and places like Publican Quality Bread wholesale top-notch stuff. But it wasn't that long ago that places like Red Hen were as good as it got in town. In that era (starting in the early 90s), Labriola Baking Company was a big player in Chicagoland, selling bread to hundreds of restaurants. At the time, it seemed good to a lot of us, but that was largely because we didn't know any better. That's a little too harsh. I think some Labriola bread was quite good, but the bread scene has just grown a ton since then. Also, Labriola grew so big, that the kind of attention needed for a truly great product probably wasn't worth the effort.

Anyhow, while his bread business was printing money, owner Rich Labriola started inching into the restaurant business. First, he opened Labriola Bakery Cafe in late 2008 out by the company's headquarters in Oakbrook. Then in 2014 opened Stan's Donuts, the upscale version of the LA original that has since grown into a mini empire with a dozen or so locations. The next year, he finally opened a pizzeria/Italian restaurant in the city.

And it was there that the Chicago Pizza Club met for the final time before the Cubs fans lost their innocence and America lost its soul.

When Rich Labriola ran his baking company, he sold dozens if not hundreds of kinds of bread. Do you think a man like that would sell just one style of pizza at his pizzeria? Would I be asking that question if the answer was yes? I would not and he would not. Labriola offered three styles of pizza back in 2016, Neapolitan, Chicago thin, and deep dish. Two of them were bad. One was the best of its kind anywhere in town.

Let's start with the good news. The deep dish pizza at Labriola is incredible. Rich Labriola certainly knows how to make stellar bread and he shows it with the best crust of any deep dish pizza in Chicago, the city that invented the stuff. It had a hint of the caramelization found at Burt's and Pequod's, but here the rest of the crust is also a treat. Would happlily eat a piece of just the crust, something I can't say about Burt's in its heydey or peak Malnati's/Pizano's.

We opted for the sausage and paid the $3 to add some fennel pollen because any self-respecting Chicagoan knows you can't have too much fennel on a pizza. The sausage was great, the sauce was great, the cheese was quality. Remember I mentioned Stan's? The original Stan's, located near UCLA, is my favorite donut shop anywhere. When Rich bought the recipes, the rights and whatever else he got in the deal, he took what Stan's perfected and reinvented them with high quality ingredients. He basically did the same thing here.

I love Malnati's and Pizano's, but every jackass standing in line at the giant new Starbucks needs to walk the 0.2 miles down Michigan Avenue and get some deep dish pizza at Labriola.

Sadly, that's the only kind of pizza that people should get at Labriola. The Chicago thin crust is merely average fare. It does benefit from better ingredients than most places but the crust was dry and utterly forgettable. Now, the reality is that the crust on most thin crust places in town, even some great ones, is really there for function. But the good ones slap you in the taste buds with strong flavors that aren't present here. More importantly, the truly great old school thin crust places (Pat's, Villa Nova, Vito & Nick's) bring the flavor and a good crust. That said, almost four years have passed since our visit and I've only had deep dish on subsequent visits, so maybe things have improved.

The Neapolitan pizza was bad. I should be clear, the pizza that they called Neapolitan that wasn't actually Neapolitan was bad. It was way too thick for anyone to take it seriously as a Neapolitan pizza, but it also lacked the subtlety and quality that so many of us associate with genuinely good Neapolitan pizza. Honestly, I was so distracted by them calling this Neapolitan pizza that it's quite possible I'm not giving it a fair review. It was probably fine. Wait, no it wasn't. Look at that sloppy mess of a pie. These days, they don't sell anything they claim to be Neapolitan. They do have something called Signature Artisan Pizza. The description, Ciabatta style dough with extra virgin olive oil to develop a crispier crust, sounds potentially promising even if the ridiculous name does not. I'll never know. Deep dish 4 life!

Dough Bros Pizzeria & Sub Shop [Meeting #116]

Dough Bros Pizzeria & Sub Shop
400 N. State Street (Map)
Chicago, IL 60654
(312) 600-9078

CPC invaded Dough Bros Pizzeria & Sub Shop on Saturday, May 9, 2015. 

Apologies to our millions of followers out there for the long delay. According to the internets, there are a couple other pizza clubs in Chicago attempting to fill the void we tend to leave. Check them out. They're newer than us, they'll die before us, they haven't been to as many places, and they don't provide as much detail, but they're better than nothing I suppose. Anyhow, have no fear - we'll live forever, even if it's just your humble scribe reporting from his nursing home cafeteria. But that's a long way off. In fact, by the time I hit publish on this 9-month-overdue post, planning will be well underway for our next meeting.



A long while back, I heard some rumblings that quality slices were being served downtown at 400 N. State Street. That caused some serious confusion in my brain because I knew that to be the site of State Street Pizza Company, a place that served pizza so terrible that only the drunkest of bros stumbling out of River North dens of douchebaggery could possibly find it satisfying. It turns out, even they refused to eat the overcheesed and underflavored industrial grade pizza coming out of that place.

But the location was good and quality slice shops are in short supply so it made sense that Jonas Falk, an enterprising whippersnapper who'd found success selling healthy lunches to schoolkids and was branching into the restaurant industry, decided to give the place a go. What's more surprising was that he was able to bring aboard Roland Liccioni, the chef at fancy-pants French restaurant Les Nomades, to join in the pizza venture.

I don't know who gets the credit, but Dough Bros Pizzeria & Sub Shop (stupid name) is serving up some seriously good pizza.



The place is small. There's only a few tables and, at least on our visit, they went unused by anyone but us. My hunch is the tables are pretty much only used at lunch time during the week. We got whole pies, but this place is very much geared towards people who are buying by the slice.

We got two pizzas.



If a chef is going to name a dish after himself, it better be good. Fortunately, the Roland Pizza is not only damned good, it's like no other pizza we know of in Chicago. Topped with heirloom tomato, thai basil, lemongrass sausage and fresh mozzarella cheese, this pie was a big plate of tangy, cheesy goodness. So good in fact, here's a couple more pictures:



Seriously, that's a delicious pie. You should eat it. Okay, time to move on.




While most pizzerias are happy to do a half/half pizza, it's not at all common to find one that will do half red/half white. Maybe because Dough Bros (still a dumb name) is primarily a slice shop, not only were they unfazed by half red/half white, an employee actually suggested it when we were openly having trouble deciding between the pepperoni and the mushroom.



I don't know what kind of pepperoni they're using at Dough Bros (come on, change the name already), but it's some excellent stuff. Everything else -the red sauce, the mozzarella, and the parmesan - are all a couple of notches above your standard slice shops. This is damned fine pizza.



The mushroom pizza has wild mushrooms, fresh mozzarella, shaved parmesan, and black truffle (allegedly - certainly not enough to see). This funky pizza is great for anyone looking for a solid hit of fungi umami.



Honestly, it's been so long since we ate there that I remember nothing about the crust. Don't remember it being bad or good. Probably was neither. Looks like it could have been cooked a little longer or in a slightly hotter oven. Whatever. This is a slice shop. The slices are really good. You should try it if you're in the area and in the mood for some pizza.

Cora Approves!

Bartoli's Pizzeria [Meeting #114]

Bartoli's
1955 West Addison Street (Map)
Chicago, IL 60613
(773) 248-0455

CPC braved a snowstorm and invaded Bartoli's Pizzeria on Sunday, December 8, 2013. 

It's been quite a while since a new place opened that serves quality deep dish pizza. Even as pizza artists have reached for the stars on the thin end of the spectrum (Reno, Balena, etc.), nobody has put forth a serious challenge to Lou Malnati's and Pizano's, both of which have added locations in recent years. But word coming out of Roscoe Village was that something pretty excellent was brewing at Bartoli's, a pizzeria with historical deep dish street cred. Kind of.

Bartoli's was founded by Brian Tondryk, who named the place after his grandfather, Fred Bartoli. Grandpa Bartoli was one of the founders of Gino's East, hence the claim to deep dish OG street cred. But neither Bartoli nor his Gino's East co-founders Sam Levine and George Loverde knew a thing about making pizza when they bought some property on East Superior Street downtown and decided to put a pizzeria in there. Instead, they simply hired Alice Mae Redmond away from Uno's.

Given that Fred Bartoli likely had nothing to do with the actual recipe at Gino's East, it's a bit curious that Bartoli's claims on its menu that "Bartoli's deep dish pizza crust is a 50-year old family recipe." I suppose family recipe could mean that the recipe was owned by the family or they could be referring to the Redmond family recipe, but those are not reasonable interpretations. Given that the current owners of Gino's East have consistently lowered their standards, it makes sense that Bartoli's explicitly declare they are carrying on the tradition of Gino's East rather than the current iteration. But to do without acknowledging Alice Mae Redmond is just not right.

So how was the food?

We tried one deep dish and one thin crust pizza. We also, thanks to a couple early arrivals hell-bent on breaking CPC protocol, tried "badger-style fried cheese balls."

Let's start with the badger-style fried cheese balls, which are basically fried cheese curds. Fried cheese is one of those things that's pretty tough to screw up and Bartoli's puts out a fine rendition. The breading is on the thicker side and had some nice seasoning. Some people opted to dip in the accompanying marinara sauce but I didn't think it was necessary.

For our deep dish selection, we opted for spinach. Bartoli's uses fresh spinach, which is always a plus, though there wasn't all that much of it on the pizza. The chunky sauce seemed fresh and was well-balanced between tangy and sweet. It was particularly good as compared to the processed sugary tomato paste Gino's East calls sauce these days. That alone makes this place leaps and bounds better than the current iteration of its inspiration.

All was not right with this pizza, however. Due to the weather, there was only one other occupied table in the place. Smart people all stayed in that night, so it's quite possible that there were a lot of deliveries going out. But whatever the reason, our pizza was significantly overcooked and had a crust that was way too firm. The taste was fine, but I couldn't get over the crunchy crust. Well, I suppose the fact that I happily ate my entire slice meant I could get over it, but it was a real flaw. I left thinking it was good enough that I should go back but it's been 5 months and that hasn't happened yet. Shame on me.

For our thin option, we went with a pizza that had mushrooms all the way across and sausage on half. Other than Pizano's, I've never been particularly impressed with the thin crust offerings from pizzerias that specialize in deep dish and Bartoli's version wasn't great. The problem, as it usually is, was that the crust was flavorless and way too dry. That said, everything else about the thin crust pie was very good.

The toppings, cheese and sauce were well-balanced. There was no skimping on the mushrooms and the sausage was very good, though a little more fennel would have been nice. All in all, a solid thin crust pizza but not one worth going out of your way for.

Phred approves of Bartoli's!

Stella Barra Pizzeria [Meeting #115]

Stella Barra
1954 N. Halsted Street (Map)
Chicago, IL 60614
(773) 634-4101

CPC invaded Stella Barra Pizzeria on Sunday, May 8, 2014. 

The Chicago Pizza Club lives! The Chicago Pizza Club will live forever! We met almost a year ago. This report was written in my head almost a year ago. I let it ferment. That made it better. You know what else gets better with fermentation? Pizza dough! But not a lot of places bother with that time-consuming step. Stella Barra does and the crust is delicious. We'll get to that. Here's the review:

We Chicagoans are justifiably proud of our pizza. Those of us who think our fair city and New York are the only two contenders for best pizza city in America the world are absolutely correct. However, just because a pizzeria is not in one of those two cities absolutely doesn't mean it isn't great. If Arizona's Pizzeria Bianco, Detroit's Loui's, New Haven's Sally's (and others), or any number of stellar pizzerias from across the country were to open an outpost in Chicago, there is simply no degree of regional chauvinism that would justify anything less than unbridled joy at the news.

That said, regional skepticism is certainly understandable when it comes to Stella Barra, a relatively unheralded (at least nationally) pizzeria opened by Chicago's own Lettuce Entertain You. For one thing, with the exception of Pizzeria Mozza, the words "LA" and "pizza," when used together, have long deserved derision. For another, while Lettuce is responsible for some great restaurants in Chicago, the empire's one foray into pizza, Frankie's 5th Floor Pizzeria, is decidedly mediocre.

Here's why you don't make assumptions about restaurants without trying them:

The 6 CPC members, 2 junior members, 2 fetuses, and one CPC guest who attended our meeting at Stella Barra were unanimously thrilled with the pizza. We made a serious dent in the menu. Given the number of pizzas, the time that has passed, the number of people who read the blog, and the value of my time, there's not going to be a detailed description of the pizza. But fear not, you'll get an overview and a lot of pictures worth somewhere between 800 and 1200 words apiece.

There are currently nine pizzas on the menu at Stella Barra. There were 10 when we went (lots of overlap with the current menu) and we tried nine of them. I should note there are technically well over 9 or 10 choices at Stella Barra because there's also the ability to customize any of the pizzas with various toppings and each pizza can be had on either their standard thin crust or their cracker thin crust. The pizzas on the menu range from simple ones like the Margherita (the only one we didn't get) to unique pies like the spinach and kale pizza with pecorino cheese and roasted garlic.

The default crust is fantastic. It's a great example of the crispy/chewy bakery quality bread that has come to embody higher end American pizza since Chris Bianco broke the mold in Arizona years ago. The chef/partner behind the pizza, Jeff Mahin, lets the dough rise for a day, beats it down, and then lets it rise again for another 12-plus hours. The result is a beautifully textured crust with a sourdough tang that I'd happily devour if it were presented sans toppings, sauce or cheese.

The extra thin version of the crust, called "Thin Sin" and referred to as Roman style, has the same flavor (but obviously less of it) and without the chewy part of the crispy/chewy. The Thin Sin will make anyone partial to old-school Chicago thin crust swoon with delight; it's a version up there with Vito & Nick's, Villa Nova, and Pat's.

Here's what we ate:

The butternut squash pizza, which is not on the current menu, has the obvious pieces of the namesake gourd as well as candied bits of bacon, tallegio cheese, fresno chilies, parmesan, parsley and oregano.

It was frigging delicious and if it doesn't come back on the menu when fall rolls around, then someone needs to be fired.

All vegetables was no problem even for the biggest meat lovers among us. The roasted spinach and purple kale were nicely salted and full of flavor that was only made better thanks to the addition of pecorino, cracked peppercorns, and garlic.

Chicago is a sausage town. Los Angeles is not a sausage town. Kale pizza from LA makes sense. Butternut squash pizza from LA makes sense. But can an LA pizzeria deliver sausage up to Chicago's standards? Yes it most definitely can. The chunks of housemade sausage use fennel pollen to get a flavor worthy of the mildly chewy texture. 

Another one not on the current menu. This is the Fennel Bianco. It had a lot of shaved fennel; some burrata; and rosemary, torn basil, and extra virgin olive oil. It was great.

The Prosciutto and Egg. It has prosciutto, it has egg, it has mozzarella, gruyere, and pecorino, it has some chili flakes and cracked black pepper. It was good. Not the best, but quite good.

That's the Rossa. At $13, it's the cheapest pizza on the menu. That's appropriate because it has no cheese. Cheese makes pizza better. That said, I liked this very simple pie topped with arugula, roasted garlic, calabrian chilies and sweet basil. I wouldn't recommend ordering it unless you're sharing a bunch of pizzas like we were. Or if you're lactose intolerant.

This Shaved Mushroom was one of our two "Thin Sin" pizzas. In addition to the funghi, this delightfully crispy pizza came with gruyère, melted onions, torn parsley, rosemary, thyme and a not-overwhelming amount of truffle flavor. This was a winner.

Four cheese is usually a dumb pizza to order but Stelios wanted this one so we got it. We ate every slice, though it was the last one we finished. If you like four cheese pizza, this is a great one to get. But if you like four cheese pizza, you should probably try other kinds of pizza. And if you like four cheese pizza, you might have to go somewhere other than Stella Barra because it's not on the menu any more.

The Hobbs Pepperoni pizza is a pepperoni pizza. It has sauce, mozzarella, a little parmesan, and, of course, pepperoni. Hobbs is a charcuterie company out there in Californ-I-A. The pepperoni was great. Obviously, this is a pretty basic pie. Basic can be great and this one was.

So there you have it, almost a year later, the Chicago Pizza Club has reemerged from its slumber. We'll try to stay awake.

Hooray for Pizza!