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Jon Stewart’s infamous 2013 takedown, when the New York pizza advocate called Chicago pie every name in the book, and some that aren’t, such as “tomato soup in a bread bowl” and “an above- ground marinara swimming pool for rats.” You really can’t trust the reasoning of people who get that worked up about food categories. My philosophy concerning hairsplitting food feuds is of the “If it looks like a duck…” variety. If it looks like the food in question, it is the food in question. A hot dog is a sandwich because it’s food between two pieces of bread; and Chicago deep-dish is pizza because it doesn’t resemble anything so much as it does pizza. It’s round; it has crust, cheese and tomato sauce; it’s cut into slices. Bingo. Deep-dish is part of Chicago’s fabled food trinity, along with the two styles of Chicago hot dog — the “dragged through the garden” version, in which the wiener is festooned with mustard, green relish, sport peppers, tomatoes and a pickle slice; and the Italian hot beef rendition, a fragrant variation of the French Dip served “au jus” and accented with giardiniera or sautéed sweet green peppers. Visitors should never leave Chicago without sampling all three, even if it does mean temporarily putting on a few pounds. Chicago food specialties are all about immediate gratification and stick-to-your-ribs comfort. There are subtleties to these dishes, but little delicacy. Winters are cold in Chicago; the summers are scorchers; the wind cuts through you; the Cubs lost for a long time; the Bears still do; and life is hard. Food should not be another sock on the jaw. As with New York pizza, Chicago has its long-standing titans. Gino’s is one. Giordano’s and Lou Malnati’s are others. All are chains that can be found all around the city. The city’s special style of pie report-

L I took a seat at the clean, well-lit bar. Gino’s has since moved to roomier digs, and the original location’s cramped, graffiti-caked, old wooden booths were gone. I ordered a small pie and waited in giddy, gluttonous anticipation. And waited. And waited. Oh, yeah, I thought. This feels familiar. I had remembered only the glorious, pig-out part of those college jaunts and forgotten the bad part: the interminable wait. Deep-dish pizzas are like soufflés; they take forever. Sitting down and ordering a pie is only the beginning. Between that action and the actual meal yawns a 45-minute chasm of limbo during which you twiddle your thumbs, run out of conver- sation, and wonder if you’ve wasted the entire evening. There are appetizers on the menu, nibbles that might help you bide the time until dinner arrives. But any deep-dish veteran knows ordering them is a rookie move. You stupidly fill up on calamari or mozzarella sticks, and by the time the main attraction arrives — a gut-busting calorie bomb itself — you’ve blown your appetite. When my pizza finally came, however, all was forgiven. It always is. Deep-dish is one of the great pizza iterations of the world. It’s pizza on steroids, a pizza layer cake. And let’s get this straight right away: It is pizza. There is a large and vocal contingent out there among the pie purists who will tell you that deep-dish is not, in fact, pizza. Food writer Ed Levine, who wrote the seminal 2005 book Pizza: A Slice of Heaven , dismissed it as “a good casserole.” And, of course, there was comedian

edly began with Pizzeria Uno, which opened in Chicago’s Near North Side neighborhood in 1943. As with most food-and-drink origin stories, however, the conven- tional wisdom is disputed. The

Deep-dish is one of the great pizza iterations of the world. It’s pizza on steroids, a pizza layer cake. And let’s get this straight right away: It is pizza.

24 JANUARY•FEBRUARY 2020