US excursion 2014: stuffed in Chicago

After my slightly disappointing first nibble of a Chicago-style deep dish pizza, I felt I owed it to myself to have a second sampling, and it just so happens that Giordano's is a block away from my hotel.  Unfortunately, the boss decided to ditch me for dinner, so I called them up to pre-order my pizza, waited for a half hour and walked over.

The special stuffed pizza - this was the small size that officially feeds two, but can easily feed three.  This was definitely pretty impressive.  The crust rises far above the top, and yes, it does make this look more like a pie, or a quiche.

The crust was thick and hard.  Like the one at Malnati's it, too, did not have much yeasty flavor.  It's kinda like a quiche crust, except a little bland... and definitely lacking salt, butter or any distinctive flavor.  Having said that, I do like the texture better than Malnati's crust.  It seemed to have multiple layers.

The word is that this isn't technically "deep dish", but they call it "stuffed pizza" because, unbeknownst to many, there is a very thin layer of dough right at the top, just below a thin layer of sauce.  It's soft so it can be mistaken for a layer of cheese, but I actually stretched it to confirm that it's not cheese.

I really enjoyed this one.  I loved the classic combination of Italian sausage, green peppers and onions.  It's also not hard to see how much cheese is in this beast, and how thick it all is.  Even in size it is very much quiche-like, and much more substantial and satisfying in that sense.  This is something I can come back for.

Well, I hit a wall sometime after I started on my third piece, and struggled to shove it all in.  Half of the small pie is a little too much for me, and I was definitely very stuffed...  I packed up the other half and took it back to my room.

P.S.  I had a piece for breakfast the next morning, cold.  In all my years, I never thought I'd enjoy cold pizza, but this wasn't bad at all...