Chicago is not short of places to go and eat out, especially when you’re thinking of having pizza for dinner. The city has a ton of pizza places with many different types of variants of the Chicago-style deep dish. Based on Gerrod’s recommendation (asserted again quite recently) I thought it best to have my first Chicago pizza experience at the Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co.
Since I was staying downtown with a friend, we took a bus on the way up that ended up being a good twenty minutes. After the huge meal we decided it’d be best to walk off our dinner (at least try to walk off some of them). The bus ride and the long walk back gave me a good sense of how close everything seemed in Chicago.
I ran a few searches online to see what other people recommended having here, and one thing that kept coming up again and again was their Mediterranean Bread. Of course we had to order that. As you can see from the picture below, it’s a huge slab of dough, rolled out to ginormous proportions covered liberally with oregano and other herbs. I can see why it’s one of their most popular dishes, packed with plenty of flavour and our only complain was really about the way that it drooped onto the table below, forcing us to eat the crusty edges faster.
Gerrod recommended getting the large pizza pot pie although we were also both intrigued to see what an oven grinder was so we figured we could split each one of those. Considering that the large pizza pot pie was almost double in price and undoubtedly more than double in size I don’t think we made a mistake ordering the small one. I think you’ll also agree it wasn’t a critical mistake when you take a look at how huge the oven grinder is.
The pizza pot pie reminded me of an open calzone with a definitely cheesy, tomato sauce filled with delicious chunks of sausage. The oven grinder, to put it frankly, was monstrous. It wasn’t just the fact that it was made with a chunky loaf of bread, or (over)filled with lots of tasty ingredients but also served with a mountain of roasted peppers. All of it definitely appreciated considering the price but still seemed like a huge amount of overkill.
I liked the fact that this place had plenty of booths giving you a bit more privacy and it’s surprising to see how half an hour makes a big difference to not having to wait and having quite a queue at the door (go early).
Name: Chicago Pizza & Oven Grinder Co
Found at: 2121 N Clark St, Chicago, IL
Website: http://www.chicagopizzaandovengrinder.com/