Restaurant Review: Lou Malnati's Chicago

I'm going to admit that when people first recommended this place I thought it was called "Illuminati's" and thought it would be a dark place. . . 

 

 

Don't judge me! You can chuckle I guess.

 

Well it was a little dark in there, traditional pizzeria and all. No demonic items but lots of sports memorabilia. Lou Malnati's features some really good Chicago style deep dish pizza. We ordered two small pizzas - one with mushrooms and one with pepperoni - and they were quite tasty. I noticed later that we could have also splurged on a butter crust but it was good with the regular variety. We have some famous deep dish pizza in Detroit courtesy of a couple of places (Pizzapapalis and Buddy's) but they are not the same but quite delicious. Pizzapapalis is a pizza with two layers of flaky pastry crust, sandwiching the fillings and cheese, topped with sauce. Buddy's pizza is a square pizza with a really crisp crust.

Lou Malnati's pizza, and Chicago pizza in general, is more like a bowl of dough that is filled with cheese and toppings. Kind of like a pie, the real "pizza pie". We ordered ours "gooey" so it was not super crisp and oh was it good.

I am not sorry to say that because we had Firecakes Donuts before this adventure, we had leftovers and I was more than happy to have some of this again for dinner on the train ride home. Maybe it was also the dessert? Chocolate chip cookie in a pizza pan cooked up and topped with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Hey it was vacation!