Some opened as pizzerias, others as taverns, and while their menus might now offer chicken wings, quinoa burgers and gluten-free brownies, their stock in trade remains pizza. These are the places that started and have stayed in Chicago (though some have multiplied beyond city limits). None went out of their way to claim the title - history can get murky when it comes to food - so after digging through news archives and interviewing current and past owners, we’ve done it for them. Meanwhile, the city's 10 oldest pizzerias just keep doing what they’ve done for generations. There is no end to the discourse on what makes an authentic/atrocious pie. Nowadays, Chicago pizza aficionados (which, you could say, includes all of us) have their pick of restaurants serving every style of pie: Neapolitan, New Haven, Quad Cities.

But pizza and the pizzeria were here to stay. Today there are more than a hundred, and the neon signs shout ‘Pizza’ all over town.'īy 1961, Granato’s was no more, felled by construction of the new University of Illinois at Chicago campus. 'It becomes the cool food, the cool meal to go with your rock ’n’ roll,” Samuelson said.Ī 1953 Chicago Daily Tribune story documented the trend: “Sixteen short years ago there wasn’t a pizzeria in the Chicago classified telephone directory. Reporter Janet Fuller shares some of the cool history of Chicago Pizza.īut pizza really took off in the 1950s, according to Tim Samuelson, the city’s cultural historian. Taverns put out thin, square-cut pizza as bar snacks patrons indulged. RELATED: A Guide to Chicago Pizza: From Deep-Dish to Tavern-Style and Beyondĭeep-dish came along in 1943, and as soldiers returned home from World War II, the pizza business picked up. Considered the city’s first official pizzeria by food-writing folks of the time, Granato's advertised its round pizzas baked in a wood-burning oven, setting it apart from Italian bakeries in the neighborhood selling sheet-pan pizza alongside breads and pastries. In the 1930s, Granato’s on Taylor Street was that place. ĬHICAGO - Hard to believe, but there was a time when pizza in Chicago was a novelty, not a given, when restaurants specializing in it got more buzz than a Brendan Sodikoff spot and squirrels could feast on a slice without becoming social media sensations. Chicago's love affair with pizza goes back to the 1930s.

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