Despite all my years in NYC, I've always been a Chicago deep dish pizza gal at heart. There's just something so comforting and glutenous about it but I've never really dared to get it outside of Chicago. It's really hard to fathom any deep dish place outside of Lou Malnati's or Gino's being good. When I'm in NYC I have no problem indulging in thin crust (or even Detroit style pizza at Emmy's Squared) pizza at all. But when I heard that a deep dish pizza place opened up in NYC, I was curious to see how it stacked up.
I didn't have any real plans on NYE, so having pizza and wine with my friend Kevin at Emmett's sounded like the perfect low key activity. The place is very small - only about 8 tables and they don't take reservations, but luckily on NYE it wasn't that nuts. I was able to snag a 2 top at 9pm with no problem but all the tables were taken throughout the night. If you don't like deep dish, you can also get thin crust here (but why would you??) as well as Chicago style hot dogs. We went for a medium pie with mushroom, green peppers and sausage ($22 for the pizza, $4 for the sausage and $2/per veggie). Similar to the pizza in Chicago, you have to wait a bit for the pizza to be made and served up but with a full bottle of wine in front of us, it wasn't a big deal.
When the pizza came out, it looked pretty authentic - it had the right thickness and texture to it. When the waitress cut into it, I noticed that the cheese wasn't a gooey as I would have liked it and it was a definitely oversauced. Once we cut into the pie, everything just kind of oozed out and lost all structure to it. The crust didn't quite hold up well to all the sauce and ingredients and by the time I got to the 3rd slice, the crust was a bit damp and didn't have the buttery cornmeal consistency that a good deep dish usually has. However, taste-wise the pizza in was pretty good and I can't complain about the effort made to make it as traditional of a deep dish as possible. It still didn't add up to the real deal in my book - but in NYC, I'm not sure if there would be a place that would.
The place was perfect for NYE - nice and cozy and the cute French waiter gave us all a free glass of champagne at midnight as we all walked outside to watch the Empire State Building change colors. Despite it not being 100% authentic in my book (it's like 85%), if I ever did crave deep dish, I would go back again since there is probably no other deep dish pizza place in the city. Total bill: $95/pp with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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