Pizzeria Due, Chicago

Photo shows: Chicago Classic Deep dish pizza. It has extra sausage and extra cheese.

Today with all the technological advancements we have this power to check whatever we want using just our phones. However, I remember when I was growing up, it was very different. I was born and brought up in a small city in India and traveling was always a hassle. We used to consult several books, ask our relatives and friends about the place we were planning to visit. All these things needed a lot of time and energy. So, we would spend a week or so planning out everything and then finally go on our trip. It happened quite a few times that we missed out on something important. Or even worse, went somewhere and didn’t find the same level of service as we were told. All these things were considered a part of the travel experience with no way to share the good and bad parts with anyone. So, I started sharing my experiences here. Today we are going to discuss a special dish of Chicago along with a restaurant review.

Why do famous restaurants and dishes always fail our expectations? Pizzeria Due is yet another example of a place where Debarshi and I went with high hopes and got disappointed.

Chicago is famous for its deep dish pizza. What does it mean? Deep dish is a type of pizza, just like thick and thin crust pizza. It is baked in a high edged pan which gives it a lot of room to stuff loads of cheese and chunky tomato sauce in it. While the pizza we normally get from the pizza shops are more like flatbreads, deep dish pizza is like a pie. 

Deep dish pizza is baked in a round pan much like a cake/ pie pan. The crust is prepared with a combination of wheat flour, corn meal and semolina making every bite crunchy. The texture looks beautifully fried with a yellowish color. 

Well you can imagine how excited we were after reading all the descriptions of the deep dish pizza! However, we must have selected a bad day/ time for visiting Pizzeria Due. The waitress kept on forgetting us. She took our order and never came back to ask for drinks or to refill the water. Deep dish pizza takes longer to bake (about 40 minutes) because of its thick crust and to be left unattended all that time sure was uncomfortable. I went twice to find our waitress but couldn’t, maybe she was on a break. Finally, she came back after about half an hour and it was clear that she had forgotten about us. The result, our pizza took another half an hour and then when it finally arrived we could see that it was baked in a hurry. The crust could have used another couple of minutes in the oven. Its color was a light yellow, in other words, it was just enough baked. 

Photo shows: Numero Uno Deep Dish pizza. It has Sausage, pepperoni, onions, peppers, mushrooms, a chunky vine-ripened tomato sauce, mozzarella and romano.

Our second pizza was oozing juices all over with the same baking problem. I know the sauce is supposed to be tangy but we could tell that it also needed some more time. 

The only good thing was, since we were waiting for more than an hour for the pizzas, we were starving. So, instead of complaining and sending the order back, we just ate them. These pizzas were super heavy with all that crust and stuffing.  

I will say it is totally up to you if you do wish to visit this restaurant. Make sure to plan it accordingly. In the meantime, if you are in Chicago, do visit these places:

• Cindy's Rooftop, Chicago
• Al's #1 Italian Beef (169 W Ontario St, Chicago)
• Alliance Patisserie – Chicago
• Little Lamb Hotpot Restaurant, Chicago