May 9

The Best Pizza In Chicago

I don't toss around words like "best" and "favorite" that often.  While I've often gone on the record about Amarind'sbeing my favorite Thai restaurant, or proclaiming that Johnnie's has the best Italian beef sandwiches, pizzas are a much touchier subject, especially in Chicago.  As for thin crust, so many Southsiders swear by Vito & Nick's, for their cracker-thin crusts, but I'm really not a fan of the pre-shredded mozz they use as a blanket for the dough.  Same goes for Northsiders who swear by Pat's; it's fine in a pinch, but it's really not the kind of pizza I consider to be the real thing: a crisp, blistered crust with a slight chew; an even, yet thin layer of fresh tomatoes (preferably San Marzanos); a few blobs of fresh mozzarella or buffalo mozz; a smattering of olive oil to give the pie some sheen.  Well, after sampling pies at local places like La Madia, Coalfired, Spacca Napoli and Pizzeria D.O.C., I've finally found my diamond-in-the-rough: Great Lake.  Nick Lessins and his wife, Lydia, are so serious about their pizzas, you can see the love and passion in every pie.  They used to live in Phoenix, and are very familiar with Pizzeria Bianco - one of the places they try to emulate - and you can tell they're aficionados.  Nick lovingly proofs and checks his dough almost religiously; he tends to his giant Montague gas-fired oven, which reaches peaks of about 650 degrees; his tomatoes, well, in fact, everything he puts on his pies come from some small, artisanal producer or farmer.  He gets his curds from Caputo'sin Chicago, then makes his own mozzarella in-house.  A German friend of his convinced him to make a pie with smoked bacon, onions and creme fraiche, resembling an Alsatian favorite.  His margherita is pure magic: simply tomato sauce, fresh mozz and a smattering of oil and fresh marjoram, it's his dough that shines through.  Nick says he just wanted to make good bread, the base for everything a good pizza is about, and he has achieved that.  His pies come out of the oven slightly bubbly on the outer rim, totally crisp and somewhat blackened underneath from the hot brick deck.  The interiors have a good chew, and the slightest amount of salt helps keep things in balance.  I can't wait to go back to Great Lake on an empty stomach.