Pequod's Pizzeria Visited 8/28/2011 3.5 Forks

Pequod's Pizzeria 2207 N Clybourn Ave., (between Webster Ave & Greenview Ave), Chicago, IL 60614

 Ahhh, deep dish pizza.  It's one of the best things about Chicago.  Every time I come to Chicago, I absolutely must have some form of deep dish pizza.  I've been to many different places, Gino's East, Giridano's, Lou Malnati's, so when Deanna had mentioned a new place that I have never been to called Pequod's I was totally down to try it.  

The place had a more sports bar vibe to it than restaurant but there were still booths and tables for you to eat at.  As with most pizza places, there's not much on the menu.  Basically, do you want pizza, pizza or pizza? We ordered a large pizza ($16) with mushroom and half with giardiniera (which is marinated spicy peppers) and split a small house salad ($3.50).  The salad was your basic house salad, but a bit heavy on the lettuce and not much else but that was totally fine as an appetizer before a heavy pizza.  Surprisingly, we didn't wait that long for the pizza, about 30-35 minutes.  But when it came out, the entire pizza had giariniera on it instead of just half of it.  I give the waitstaff a lot of props because they were so apologetic about it and offered to bring a separate small mushroom pizza free of charge (or we could have waited for them to bring a brand new pizza, which I didn't think was necessary).  The waitress felt bad because I said I didn't want super spicy stuff on my pizza, but when I tried the mixture pizza the giardiniera was totally not that spicy...it definitely added a kick to the pizza but it wasn't like the green curry I had in Thailand where I thought my face was going to melt off.  So I felt bad that the waitress gave us a whole other pizza when this one was totally edible. 


Overall, the pizza was great but I thought it could have used more cheese.  In some bites, I got lot of crust and tomato sauce but not the gooey cheese.  I loved that they were very generous with the toppings and the mushrooms were great and fresh.  What they are famous for is actually the caramelized crust.  At first I didn't really understand what that meant, but it's just the cheese that they let ooze over the crust and burn to a caramelized consistency.  While I liked the pizza I still like Lou Malnati's better (probably because it has more cheese and butter in their crust).  However, when I warmed up the pizza the next day I actually loved it more than when it first came out of the oven.  So the 3.5 Forks is due to the fabulous and generous waitstaff and the great day after taste. 

Photo credit: Yelp