Giordano's ~ regional chain : Chicago, Illinois

Latest visit: Nov 2022 (Chicago - Central Loop)

First visit: Oct 1997 (Westchester, Illinois)

Talk with anyone that knows what Chicago Pizza is and they're likely to break into an argument about who's better between Giordano's and Lou Malnati's. I have never been to the latter, and this is only my second time to the former. As you can see, my first visit was 25 years ago. At that time, our Chicago office was in Westchester, a most wonderful inner suburb that housed many great "old school Chicago" restaurants. With names like "Beef" as noted in Luke's post. The Giordano's there was something of an afterthought, representing a chain like experience among much more worthy independent establishments. I wasn't impressed.

But here we are in Chicago, and it's time for the team dinner. There's about 10 of us, and my coworker and I agreed that we should try for a Chicago legend. And pizza sounded great to all of us who were hungry after a full day of deliberation. He made reservations at Giordano's and I could only hope that my experience was better this time.

It wasn't. The restaurant is much larger than the Westchester outlet, but the pizzas just didn't do much for me. We had both the deep dish and thin crust. Neither blew my socks off. Not that I would want such an event to happen at a business team dinner... We ordered wisely - getting an all meat and all veggie deep dish along with a thin crust cheese pizza. I went for the all meat deep dish to start. I'm just not sold. It's possible I just don't like the style all that much. The crust just doesn't work for me, and I'm not too keen on the tomato sauce either. The thin crust was better, but it was a little flat to be honest. Not literally the crust (which is how it's supposed to be) but rather it lacked ambition. Beer list was lame too. I dunno. Need to try Lou Malnati's I guess, huh?

Giordano's began in 1974. They have 49 locations in Illinois and a smattering of others in a few states. There's actually 2 in the Denver area which I didn't realize. None in Texas. The Westchester locale is still there.

10/28/97; 11/4/22 (new entry)