Is it really too much to ask to get some decent pizza in Chicago? I don’t really want to sound like a pizza snob, since I’m not really from NYC or anything, but Chicago pizza is so substandard even when compared to Albany pizza. I have tried maybe 7 different pizza places since I got here, and none of them could hold a candle to NYC pizza.

I was in Manhattan last weekend and walked into a regular hole-in-the-wall on upper east side. It was emotional. I was very close to bursting into tears. I asked the slice, why did I move so far away from you?

Last night I finally walked into Cafe Luigi. I’ve been meaning to check it out because it looked more legit than other Chicago pizza joints. Not only did a slice cost an ungodly $3, it again failed to meet my standards. The sauce out here is way too sweet – is it an American boondocks thing to always strive toward diabetes? The dough almost always tastes like cardboard, with slightly charred odor I could really do pizza without. You can’t possibly screw up cheese and toppings, but man, the sauce and the dough really ruins Chicago pizza. They say it’s in the water – well, isn’t it time some chemists ran the Hudson River water through an HPLC or NMR and came up with a “pizza dough water electrolytes” mix?? I understand it’s important to use those machines to analyze things like antioxidants and paramagnetism, but really people, first things first.

The best pizza I’ve had out here remains D’Agostinos at Addison and Southport. Even these guys fall short of the most plebian NYC joints, but they put good Chicago-style toppings on like Italian Beef.

And don’t even give me that deep-dish crap. That’s not pizza. It’s quiche.

Is it too much to ask? I don’t think so. Learn to make pizza right, Chicago. Throughout history Chicago has been trying to catch up with NYC, and with this problem unsolved, it will always be so far behind.