There's more than one New Haven-style pizza place in Chicago

This one took us by surprise

Hi there!

Many of you subscribed to my newsletter because you saw my pizza adventures with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt on Instagram last week. I’ve known him for a long time, and when he said he was coming to Chicago for some thin-crust party cut pizza research, of course I told him I’d meet up.

I showed him around the South side for a day and apparently that got everyone way more excited than I’d expected. In any case, welcome. There’s quite a few of you.

Quick intro before I start this bad boy up: This newsletter is about all Chicago food, not just pizza, and it’s also reader-supported. Every alternate week’s edition is for paid subscribers; you just happened to catch the newsletter on one of those weeks.

If you’d like to upgrade your subscription to read today’s piece, I’ve included that handy button above, otherwise, next week’ll be a freebie. And if you’re new, you can check out the archives via the web. Today’s is a special piece because it just so happens to be about pizza, but a very rare sort you almost can only find in one very specific part of the country.

When you think about New Haven-style pizza in Chicago, there’s only one name that comes to mind: Piece Pizza, in Wicker Park.

Many of you are familiar with the place. It’s co-owned by the guitarist of Cheap Trick, Rick Nielsen, and also functions as a brewery with pretty good beer (though for some reason nobody ever seems to talk about that part).

Davida and I went to Piece a few months back to try our friend Billy Z’s pizza (which was spectacular), and I’d forgotten how much I like that style of crust; it’s satisfyingly chewy and crisp and lives between the gap of New York style pizza and puffy Neapolitan. It was Davida’s first time and she remarked about how much she liked the texture of it.

Piece, however, has been the only place to get New Haven-style pizza in Chicago for many years now. If you want variety in that style, you’re out of luck. But one day I accidentally stumbled upon some info that caught me off guard.

Piece isn’t the only New Haven-style pizzeria in Chicago anymore.