Take a (short) road trip for some deep dish
it's worth the trip
Hi!
Today’s edition is a guest post by my friend Brian Erst, who knows his shit about pizza. He’s a long time acquaintance-turned-friend from back in my Serious Eats days. Not only is Brian a talented home pizzamaker, he’s a valuable source of knowledge for Chicago’s very unique pizza scene.
For a newsletter called The Party Cut, I figured it should probably have some pretty good intel on pizza (duh); our unique styles of pizza deserve a spot in the pantheon of pies. And Brian’s got the lowdown, so expect to see more stuff from him on the newsletter, and always feel free to reach out to me if you too would like to share your favorite spots in and around Chicago, pizza-or-not.
Let’s rock.
Pizza Wars, Part I: Let’s Go Deep
“Chicago style” pizza is a deeply controversial topic, both inside Chicago and throughout the country.
The controversy outside the city is whether deep dish pizza is even pizza. John Stewart and millions of New Yorkers dismissively call it a casserole. Eating pizza with a fork and knife is so déclassé that they universally mocked their own mayor when he did so.
The controversy inside the city is over which of the indigenous styles of pizza in Chicago deserves the term “Chicago style.” Chicago has at least five separate styles of pizza invented or popularized here (deep dish, deep pan with caramelized cheese, stuffed, thin crust, and double decker) and each has its own partisans. But the big, knockdown fights are between the thin crust aficionados and the deep dish lovers.
Millions of South Side Chicagoans are Team Thin Crust—many of whom have never had a deep dish pizza in their lives (it is not a style commonly found south of Madison Street) and it’s championed by Chicago’s own Pizza City USA evangelist Steve Dolinsky. It goes by many names (“thin crust,” “square cut,” this newsletter’s namesake “party cut” and the oddly divisive “tavern cut”) but it’s easily the most common pizza style found in mom and pop pizzerias around Chicagoland.
Meanwhile, on the North Side and Chicagoland suburbs, as well as the minds of most people outside of Chicago, deep dish is the true exemplar of Chicago style pizza. In a debate over the subject this past summer at Pizza City Fest, Mark Malnati (the owner of Lou Malnati’s, a chain of more than 50 deep dish pizzerias) claimed to have sold over five million deep dish pizzas last year. Paraphrasing Mark, “If deep dish isn’t popular or only an occasional indulgence, who’s buying all these pizzas?”
I think these fights are kind of silly, and that’s how most people treat them, as a light bit of fun. I’m a pizza universalist. I love all kinds of pizza as long as they are made with care and passion.
So in my series, Pizza Wars, I’m going to make the best case for each of the major styles of Chicago pizza. I’m going to highlight one pizzeria that really nails their style of pizza. This shouldn’t be read as “the best” pizzeria of each style – it’s a list of personal favorites. As a friend of mine says, “there are no bests, only favorites.”
In this first installment of Pizza Wars, we’re going to start with the elephant in the room—deep dish pizza—and see an example of it at its best.
Uncle Jerry’s Pizza Company, Cary, IL
Jerry Czerwinski calls his pizza “pan pizza,” which just goes to show that the terminology around Chicago pizza styles is consistently inconsistent.
When I talk about deep dish pizza, I am talking about a style of pizza that is cooked in a pan with a relatively thin crust that is pushed to the edges of the pan, and then pulled partway up the walls of the pan. This style of pizza is usually built “upside down,” as in, the cheese is laid down first, followed in order by sausage or spinach, crushed tomatoes, grated cheese, veggies and finally pepperoni and/or seasonings.
It was invented at Riccardo’s Pizzeria in 1943 (later renamed Pizzeria Uno when they opened a second location, Pizzeria Due, kitty-corner from the first spot) and further refined by generations of the Malnati family (who worked at Riccardo’s before opening their own pizzerias, Lou Malnati’s and Pizano’s) and by longtime chef Alice Mae Redmond, who modified the original recipe using an old family biscuit recipe to make it easier to spread in the pan and later went to create the pizza at Gino’s East.
Jerry grew up on Lou Malnati’s pizza and the deep pan pizzas of Burt Katz (founder of Gulliver’s, Pequod’s and the eponymous Burt’s Place) that have a bready crust surrounded by a deeply caramelized edge of cheese reminiscent of a Detroit pizza’s frico edge.
When he and wife Nancy moved out to far suburban Cary, IL, there were no good deep dish or pan pizzas around, so he began experimenting with making his own. After years and years of experiments and pizza parties with friends, he nailed down a hybrid of those two styles, the thin, pressed short dough of deep dish and the caramelized cheese of deep pan.
Jerry started getting requests for frozen pizzas from friends and neighbors that they could bake at home, and he began a small operation just to satisfy this small but enthusiastic audience. He and Nancy began thinking about opening a pizzeria and came close a few times, but the timing and location never worked out. But when COVID hit, his frozen pizzas started to develop a wider following and he was making so many that he started seriously considering making the pizza business his full time job.
Serendipitously, a local butcher shop that had a large restaurant space also had a vacancy, so during the height of COVID, Jerry and family began converting the space into Uncle Jerry’s Pizza Company.
As Illinois began to reopen after its lockdowns, Uncle Jerry’s opened up as well, part of a wave of pizza entrepreneurs that launched during the pandemic. Cary, IL is a sleepy little community about 45 miles northwest of downtown Chicago and not on anyone’s pizza radar, but the locals knew a good thing and began to flock to Uncle Jerry’s.
One of those people, inadvertently, was me. I had taken my son out for one of those “get out to the countryside” trips everyone was doing as the lockdowns were easing and we ended up not far from Cary, IL. As is often the case, we were in the mood for pizza and happened onto Uncle Jerry’s on the basis of a good looking couple of pictures found on the web. Boy, howdy, was I glad to have stumbled on it.
Jerry makes what is easily my favorite deep dish pizza in all of Chicagoland. Although the heaviness of deep dish pizza is often overstated, Jerry’s is lighter than all of them. It’s the crust that really separates Jerry’s from the rest, very thin, light and airy on the bottom and extremely crisp around the edge.
That edge also has a caramelized cheese layer. Jerry lays slices of high quality part-buffalo mozzarella cheese up the edge of the pan, which browns deeply in the oven and merges with the crust to create a delicious and superlative crunch. While Jerry’s crust is closest in style to Lou Malnati’s crust, it has much more flavor. Some techniques borrowed from focaccia and a little salt really makes it stand out.
As a true native of Chicagoland, I am required by law to order at least one pizza that has sausage.
Jerry has developed his own sausage recipe, a light garlic sausage, that is ground fresh by the in-house butcher (the restaurant is literally inside a butcher shop). A solid layer of sausage is pinched and pressed onto the cheese, then big ladles of Jerry’s tomato sauce (a blend of multiple brands of tomato to get the right combination of sweet, tangy and savory) is spread on top. Then a scattering of grated cheese and high-quality pepperoni is added, and when the pie is fired, the pepperoni becomes cupped and curled for a spicy, slightly crispy, meatiness.
Jerry and I have become friends and we collaborated on a pizza that has become an occasional special at the restaurant and a favorite of the entire Czerwinksi family.
The Rosa is a deceptively simple but flavor packed pizza that is an homage to the pizza of the same name at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix (which is personally my favorite pizza in the whole world).
On top of his fantastic crust and cheese, big handfuls of grated parmesan cheese are layered on top, along with slivered red onions, rosemary, extra virgin olive oil and lightly crushed pistachios. The smell coming out of the oven is intoxicating. That combination of rosemary, red onion and parmesan create a mouthwatering aroma. Heads turn when they smell this one coming out of the oven.
In the little-over-a-year in operation, the Czerwinski family has grown a lot as pizza makers and business operators.
In addition to Jerry and Nancy, the Czerwinski kids are a huge part of the business. Chloe is an up and coming pizzaiola on her own (I had the pleasure of watching her compete in a pizza competition at the National Pizza Show earlier this year) and works the ovens while Casey is working the line and building the pizzas. Other members of the family help out when they can and some nights it feels like there are more Czerwinskis than can possibly fit in one place!
Uncle Jerry’s has been discovered by the wider pizza community with stories by Nick Kindelsperger in the Chicago Tribune and Steve Dolinski on NBC5 Chicago’s The Food Guy. It can get crowded on weekends but the local crowd generally comes early, so tables are easier to come by after 7pm.
It’s gonna take you a while to drive out there anyway, so take your time and you will be rewarded with some of the best pizza around, and the best example I can come up with for why deep dish should be in the running for True Chicago Style pizza.
Uncle Jerry’s Pizza Company
133 W Main St
Cary IL, 60013
(224) 888-8663
Monday : Closed
Tuesday - Thursday: 4:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Friday - Saturday: 11:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Sunday: 11:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Like I said, Brian’s got the lowdown. (It’s Dennis again, by the way.) I had the privilege of judging Uncle Jerry’s pizza alongside Brian at the same expo he mentioned earlier, and the Czerwinskis couldn’t have been a nicer family.
Thank you all for reading The Party Cut, and don’t forget to sign up for a paid subscription, as every other edition is for paid subscribers.
That money goes towards supporting our exploration of Chicago, and of course, if you’re interested in contributing your own personal favorites in an edition of the newsletter, feel free to reply to any edition, and let’s talk.
Now hop in your car (or the Metra, it stops across the street from Uncle Jerry’s in Cary), and go get some pizza.
Damnit, I live waaaaaay to far away to taste this. But since we’re on the subject of pizza, I had a bit of inspiration the other night when making a far too late pie. It was something of a fridge-clearer, so it had barbecue sauce, roast chicken, Monterrey Jack and onions on way too much crust for the pan I used. Not wanting to waste the skin from my roast bird, I decided to see how it would be if it was stuck to the crust. I am here to tell you that stuffed crust is for losers; chicken skin crust is where it’s at, if you find yourself in a situation where chicken pizza is happening.
This article made me hungry. Great descriptions of the textures of flavors. Time to make pizza!