When most people think of Chicago pizza, they think of the deep-dish pies with cheese on the bottom.  But the best pizza restaurants in Chicago make all kind of pizza.  You’ll find organic, designer pies with gourmet pizza toppings, Neapolitan pizzas baked in wood-fired ovens, and square-sliced tavern-style pizzas covered in Italian sausage.

No discussion of Chicago Pizza is complete without mentioning Pizzeria Uno.  The first Chicago-style pie was served here in 1943, and it was an immediate hit.  So much so that they opened Pizzeria Due on the next block.  The dough is made each morning, and the sauce-to-cheese ratio is just right.  They make healthy, flatbread pizzas here too.  You can choose multi-grain crust and top it with roasted eggplant, spinach, and feta.  But why bother?  If you come to Chicago and want to try a Chicago-style pizza, go to Pizzeria Uno, order a deep-dish with “the works” and repent later.

Lou Malnati’s is the other legendary Chicago deep-dish pizza restaurant.  Lou’s dad, Rudy Malnati, was the chef at Pizzeria Uno, and some even credit him with inventing the deep-dish pizza when he worked there in the 1940s.  The first Lou Malnati’s opened in Lincolnwood in 1971.  Today, there are 30 Lou Malnati’s in the greater Chicagoland area.  But if you don’t live in Chicago, no problem.  They ship pizzas on dry ice to anywhere in the United States.   The buttery crust travels pretty well.

Bacino’s specializes in stuffed pizzas, and several of them are pretty healthy.  The owner, Dan Bacin, is committed to uses the freshest ingredients, and everything here is made from scratch.   Spinach, broccoli, and mushroom are popular selections, but plenty of meat toppings are available.  Bacino’s has been the top selling pizza at the Taste of Chicago for the last 30 years.  The wine list is also a cut above.

Bricks Chicago has been serving gourmet, thin-crust pizzas since 1997.  Try a Creole Shrimp Pizza with spicy shrimp, pesto, red peppers, mozzarella, and gouda or a Sweet Heat with chicken breast, bacon, diced jalapeno, smoked gouda, barbecue sauce, and mozzarella.  If you don’t like any of the specialties, you can create your own with interesting pizza toppings like Maytag bleu cheese, pureed artichokes, or banana peppers.  Bricks has a good selection of microbrews on draught and in the bottle.

Fans of Neapolitan pizza should head to Coalfire.  The coal-burning oven here reaches temperatures up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, which produced a crispy, yet chewy crust with a little bit of charring.  In a departure from the Naples way, the pizza is topped with cheese first, and then tomato sauce.  Three topping or fewer are recommended — the crust can’t hold up to more than that.  The white pizza with ricotta, mozzarella, Romano cheese and fresh basil is delicious.    And the Pizza Margherita may be the best in Chicago.  Coalfire used to be BYOB, but they’re now serving beer and wine.

The first certified, organic pizza restaurant in the Midwest, Crust serves inventive flatbread pizzas that are cooked in a wood-burning oven.  Try a cocktail made with one of their vodka infusions.  Start your meal with brussel sprouts with crispy bacon, tapenade, roasted peppers, kalamata olives, caramelized onions, roasted garlic, goat cheese, and flatbread pieces, or a winter beet salad.  Then try a pizza with slow-cooked beef brisket, house-made barbecue sauce and pepper jack cheese, or a Carbonara with bacon, béchamel, caramelized onions, peas, and a sunny-side up egg.

Famous for its stuffed pizzas, Giordano’s has been in business since 1974.  Two brothers from a town near Torino, Italy, named the restaurant after their mother, who made a double-crust pizza that inspired the pies served here.  The flaky, buttery crust is what set Giordano’s apart — that and the prodigious amounts of stringy, mozzarella packed inside it.  For something different, try the shrimp pizza.

One of the other great places in Chicago for Naples-style pizza is Sapore di Napoli.  They import many of their ingredients from Italy, including Molino Caputo 00 flour, Bufala Mozzarella, and Calabria salami.   Although the tomatoes aren’t the traditional San Marzanos from Campania, but Stanislaus from California.  In keeping with Neapolitan tradition, toppings are simple and few.   Try Quattro Formaggi with mozzarella, Italian gorgonzola, fontina, and Parmigiano Reggiano or Patate e Rosmarino with sliced potatoes and rosemary.   Save room for some of their delicious gelato — there are more than a dozen flavors nightly.

The Art of Pizza serves deep-dish, thin-crust, and stuffed pizzas.  They also serve Italian-style subs on yummy bread, ribs, wings, and pasta.  But the deep-dish pies, voted best in the city by the Chicago Tribune, are the big draw.  Try the Southwestern stuffed pizza with barbecue sauce, ground beef, onions, and bacon.  Or the special with sausage, onions, mushrooms, and green pepper.  For dessert, have a creamy, ricotta-filled cannoli.

Members of all the Neapolitan pizza associations, including Associazione Pizzauoli Napoletani and L’Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana, Spacca Napoli makes authentic Naples-style pizza in a custom-made, wood-burning oven.  In business since 2006, they import their flour, San Marzano tomatoes, and extra virgin olive oil.  There’s an assortment of novel appetizers like new potatoes, tuna, cucumber, and capers or white anchovies over arugula, cherry tomatoes, and olives.  A nice selection of Italian wines, and some lovely desserts.  When the weather’s nice, you can dine outside on the terrace.

Find more great pizza restaurants here.

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If you’ve been to gourmet pizza restaurants like Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles or Co. in New York, you’ve probably seen the term “salumi.” But since the word has come into fashion only recently, you may not know exactly what it means.

Salumi is Italian (it’s the plural form of salume), but it’s not a misspelling of salami, although salami is a form of salumi. Confused yet?

Salumi refers to Italian-style cured meats in the same way that “charcuterie,” refers to the French equivalent. And what’s not to like about that?

Most salumi is made from pork. A notable exception is bresaola, which is made from beef. Salumi is usually cured with salt, which kills bacteria, and dehydrates the meat. As the meat is cured, it become firm and the flavor intensifies.

Authentic Italian salumi

Salumi can be smoked (like speck), or unsmoked (like pancetta). Encased (like salami), or not (like lomo). And cooked (like Italian sausage) or eaten raw (like Prosciutto Crudo). It’s often thinly sliced as served as part of an antipasto.

Because it’s cured, most salumi lasts a long time if stored properly. But once it’s sliced, it should be eaten quickly. Otherwise, it dries out. Salami, which is made with ground pork and a variety of seasonings, lasts a little longer because of the added fat — usually from 20 – 25%.

Many Italian pizzas feature some kind of salumi. The most popular are pepperoni and Italian sausage. But many other Italian meats make delicious pizzas too. Coppa, capicola, and sopressata are all great meat pizza toppings.

Salumi from Molinari in San Francisco

Because of the cost of meeting U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards, few Italian salumi makers can afford to import their products into the United States. Which is too bad, because they’re really wonderful. What sets them apart is the quality of the pork, which in most cases comes from pigs that were naturally raised on a farm.

Outside Italy, most Italian butchers sell some salumi. And prosciutto and pancetta are available in most groceries. There are several American producers who are making salumi the way they do in Italy. The best known is Salumi Artisan Cured Meats in Seattle, which is owned by Mario Batali’s father, Armandino. You can order their products at www.salumicuredmeats.com

The next time you’re craving a real Italian pizza, try using some of these delicious salumi cured meats as pizza toppings.

Read more about Italian pizza meats here.

Authentic Italian salumi Image Flickr: rfarmer
Salumi from Molinari in San Francisco Image Flickr: biskuit

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Nothing makes a pizza more Italian than authentic Italian meats. Since tomatoes and mozzarella are a given, it’s meat pizza toppings like pancetta and proscuitto that can really boost the flavor of an Italian-style pizza.

Not long ago, it wasn’t that easy to find these products. But these days, many grocery stores like Fresh and Easy and Trader Joe’s carry them. So you can make a delicious Italian pizza right at home.

Pancetta, which is often referred to as Italian bacon, is pork belly that has been spiced, salt-cured, and dried for several months. But unlike American bacon, it’s not smoked. In Italy, it’s often rolled and then thinly sliced. In the United States and Britain, it’s often sold diced.

Because pancetta is salty, it’s especially delicious when combined with sweet pizza toppings. Try is with ripe pear or butternut squash.

Prosciutto is uncooked Italian ham. It’s also cured with salt and aged. Some prosciutto has the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) which dictates how it is produced and what ingredients can be used.

The most famous is Prosciutto di Parma. The pigs here are fed whey left over from making Parmigiano-Regianno cheese, which gives the prosciutto a slightly nutty flavor. If you travel around Italy, you’ll notice that each region’s prosciutto has a distinctive taste.

Usually, a pork leg is covered with sea salt and left to cure for a couple of months in a cool place. After that, it’s washed and left to dry. Once it’s dry, it’s hung for up to two years in a well-ventilated place.

Prosciutto pizza

In Italy, it’s called prosciutto crudo or “raw ham” because it’s not cooked. It’s often eaten as an appetizer with melon, breadsticks, asparagus, or fresh mozzarella. Or used in pasta dishes with peas and a cream sauce. Saltimbocca, which is veal topped with prosciutto, sage, and cheese, is one of Rome’s best loved dishes.

Prosciutto is one of the pizza toppings on a Pizza Capricciosa, which also has mushrooms, artichokes, and olives. It’s also excellent with nutty cheeses like Fontina and Gruyere.

Less well known outside Italy, guanciale is unsmoked Italian bacon made from pork jowls or cheeks. To make it, the pork is rinsed in wine, seasoned and left to marinate for over a month. Like prosciutto, it’s left to dry, but unlike prosciutto, it’s meant to be cooked.

Prosciutto

There aren’t many places outside of Rome that sell guanciale, but if you have a good Italian butcher, you can ask. You can also order it online. If you have guanciale, render it in a pan before using it as a pizza topping, and the save the drippings and make something fabulous with them. It’s extremely high in fat, but since even a small amount adds a tremendous amount of flavor, it won’t bust your diet completely.

You can also make your own if have access to pork jowls and are willing to wait three weeks.

Its rich, pork flavor is the cornerstone of dishes like Spaghetti alla Carbonara and Bucatini all’Amatricana, though pancetta is often substituted.

Read more about Italian pizzas here.
And find more pizza meats here.

Pancetta Image Flickr: tsuacctnt
Proscuitto Pizza Image Flickr: stu spivak
Proscuitto Image Flickr: mandydale

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