Hank Vaughn
Audio By Carbonatix
Dallas is arguably a pizza city. We have some legit world class pie from Naples-natives, New York City slices made with water filtered to mimic the Big Apple’s taps. We’ve got brick ovens shipped in from Italy and thick bricks of Detroit’s finest. And while Chicago is known for it’s deep-dish style pizza, we’ve actually got more of the thin tavern style, made to be eaten at a bar on small plates to nosh along with a frothy pint. Who’s hungry? Dang.
Chicago’s Best Slice (or Squares)
Carl Sandburg once described Chicago in his eponymous poem as the “city of Big Shoulders,” and it’s no wonder, what with lifting and hauling all those massive deep-dish pizzas everywhere. These huge, thick slabs of cheese and crust that can take an hour to bake and even longer to eat have become synonymous with the city of Chicago, for better or worse. It’s no surprise, therefore, that to the otherwise uninitiated, these dense gooey wheels have become the paradigm of Chicago-style pizza in the hungry hearts (hat tip Bruce Springsteen) worldwide.
But it’s not always been that way.
The History of Tavern Style Pizza
Tavern-style pizza became popular in Chicago at the end of Prohibition when local bars started serving pizza that could be held with just a napkin. Instead of eight slices per pie, a round pizza cut into 2-inch squares can yield two dozen or more pieces. It takes minutes to prepare and bake, unlike 45 minutes for a deep dish. It travels better than deep dish and heats up better the next day. One or two small square slices heated up for “breakfast” the next day, popped into your mouth while waiting at a stoplight during your commute to work? Yum. Try doing that with a three-inch thick wedge of deep dish. Deep dish’s supplanting of thin crust in the popular psyche of the nation makes it a challenge for Chicago ex-pats living scattered around the country and searching for a good tavern-style pizza.
How does the Dallas area fare in providing options to sate their Chicago thin-crust pizza cravings? Let’s look at a few Dallas-area restaurants that purport to serve this forgotten style of Chicago pizza.
The Best Tavern-Style Pizza in Dallas
Bryan Street Tavern
4315 Bryan St.
This Old East Dallas spot is a tavern at heart: a cozy neighborhood watering hole with hearty dishes from the kitchen. At the core of the menu are the cracker-thin-crust pizzas cooked in a brick oven. Look for The Lou, a spin on the St. Louis staple (yes, we’re deep in the Midwest now) loaded with marina, Provel cheese, pepperoni, Jimmy’s spicy Italian sausage, onion and mushroom. Happy hour runs 4 to 7 p.m. weekdays and they offer other drink specials throughout the week.
Hank Vaughn
Louie’s
1839 N. Henderson Ave.
Louie’s has a loud, vocal fanbase and for good reason. It puts the “tavern” in tavern-style perhaps more than any other place on this list with a true neighborhood bar atmosphere. The only thing missing is Old Style on tap. Great quality ingredients are cooked properly, even if placed on the crust without much regard to aesthetic appearance or uniformity, but that’s what you usually get in a bar, anyway. Pieces are more rectangular than square, but you didn’t bring your protractor with you anyway, right? For better or worse, for those looking for an authentic experience Louie’s is as close as it gets.
DL Mack’s
Multiple Locations
DL Mack’s calls itself a tavern and serves what it calls “Chicago-style cracker crust” pizza. The tavern moniker is a bit of a misnomer, as this is pretty upscale for a tavern. Chicago personality is sprinkled throughout the space. The menu leans artisnal with things like the Hot Papi’s Favorite is made with a white sauce, pancetta, jalapeno and gorgonzola blue cheese. There’s a barbecue chicken and honey truffle chicke. Even the Chicago speical feels like Dallas: pepperoni, onion, jalapeno and Mike’s Hot Honey. We particularly like the nice chunks of sausage served here as opposed to the less-desirable loose ground variety; the onions were purple and sliced, the sauce was well-seasoned and the crust was thin, though it could have been a tad thinner. All in all, it was a very satisfying pizza and ticked all the boxes.
Hank Vaughn
Chicago’s Original Pizza
1206 E. Main St., No. 111, Allen
Any place that has the gumption to name its establishment Chicago’s Original Pizza better live up to that lofty claim, and this place does. Owner Tom Lease, a transplant from the ‘burbs of Chicago, passed away a couple of years ago, leaving a legacy that includes great pizza. This is primarily a takeout-only place, as the only seating is a single picnic table outside. Evidently, a significant number of Chicago ex-pats visit to relive their Chicago grub days; the menu also includes such Chicago stalwarts as Italian beef sandwiches, Polish sausages, and hot dogs.
Lease once related a tradition that I had never heard of: the delivery driver gets to eat one of the round corner slices as a reward for his driving efforts. Apocryphal? Let’s hope so. In any event, this pizza was extremely good, even if we had to eat it while sitting outside in 40-degree weather. It was the right thin-ness, the sauce was tasty, the cheese perfect and the sausage perfectly chunked. They don’t offer red onion, only white, but at least that wasn’t diced. After eating one of the round corner slices as a reward for the trip to Allen, we boxed up the rest and looked forward to a nice breakfast during our morning commute.
Cindy Ju Vaughn
Rosati’s
Two Locations
There are two Rosati’s in North Texas, each from different branches of the family to boot — one in Lewisville and the other in Flower Mound — but that confusion aside they do offer up a pretty good thin crust: cheesy and gooey with the edges slightly overcooked as they should be. However, the square size is a bit larger than we’d like in a perfect world. The Windy City style of tavern pizza is loaded with Italian sausage, garlic, onion and a house-made giardiniera. They also offer Italian beef sandwiches, though they’re priced on the high end. Note: We tried ordering from Rosati’s for delivery, but unless you live relatively close to the location, this type of pizza does not travel well.
Hank Vaughn
Andrew’s American Pizza Kitchen
1401 Preston Road, Plano
Andrew’s offers several regional-style pizzas: Dallas (whatever that is), Detroit, New York and Chicago, but if you want thin-crust tavern-style pizza made famous by the Windy City, you’ll have to grit your teeth and order what they call “Philly tavern style pizza,” which is, of course, an abomination. You’ll receive a square-cut thin pizza that could be thinner, but it will have to do. Now, if they would just reconsider rebranding the name. Save the Philly moniker for those sandwiches I’ve heard so much about.
Eno’s Pizza Tavern
407 N. Bishop Ave.
Located in the heart of the Bishop Arts District in Oak Cliff (with other locations in Forney and Coppell), Eno’s offers pizza at slightly elevated prices that nonetheless garner a lot of praise. They have “tavern” right in their name, but this pizza seems to be more of a Dallas twist on a traditional Chicago tavern pizza. It’s not super-thin, but it isn’t pan; at least it is cut into squares for ease of eating. Some interesting toppings are available, such as beef and boar meatballs and calabrese hot peppers for the non-traditionalists out there. That seems a bit high, but gentrification of a neighborhood comes at a price.
Division has a couple of white sauce pizzas on the menu.
Lauren Drewes Daniels
Division Brewing
506 E. Main St., Arlington
Division Brewing opened a restaurant next to its brewery in Arlington, serving burgers and a handful of tavern-style pizzas. Each unique, asymmetrical crust starts as a flat-rolled, ultra-thin piece of dough. Pizzas are a touch short of burnt, giving them that extra crispiness. They have pepperoni and sausage (ground in-house) along with a hot honey number. Two pizzas come with white sauce, one with sausage and a sprinkle of pistachio, which is highly recommended. Naturally, the brewery’s beers are available on tap.
Biundo’s
104 Second St., Venus
If you’re willing to make the 45-minute drive from Dallas to Venus (about 15 minutes southwest of Midlothian), you’ll be find some thin crust that’s pretty affordable at Biundo’s. A cheese is just $11.45, with various combo specials running up to about $20. They also have pan pizza and stuffed, but why bother? You didn’t make this long trek for a casserole. The restaurant is located in a charming little old town area; might make for a nice Sunday road trip. Go see all the fields with happy cows between here and Venus before urban sprawl swallows it all up.
5th Street Pizza
111 Central Expressway N., No. 102, Allen
5th Street Pizza offers St. Louis, traditional and “Chicago thin,” with the usual toppings as well as meatballs, salami and steak. One of the specialty pizzas — the Chicken Pig — includes fajita chicken, jalapeños and breakfast bacon on Alfredo sauce, if that’s your thing. Can’t imagine finding that in a corner tavern in Berwyn or wherever, but let’s not quibble. They also have a bunch of salads if that would make you feel better.
If you want a tomato-and-cheese casserole, by all means, continue ordering Chicago deep-dish. However, if you’d like to be transplanted back to the corner taverns of Chicago, where Old Style flows freely, and tourists are nonexistent, give these local spots a try. If you know of any others, please tell us. There can never be too many tavern-style Chicago pizza joints.
