I never have been to Chicago and I’m not real familiar with Chicago Style Pizza. Lou Malnatis is a Famous Pizza Chain from Chicago that’s well known for their Signature Deep Dish Chicago Style Pizza.  Lou Malnatis has opened their first Restaurant in Phoenix AZ and that’s a big deal so I thought I’d give it a try.

Lou Malnatis

The inside of the restaurant has a fun retro kind of interior with interesting fixtures and bright lights that spell cheese on a wall in the dining room.

We order our individual sized pizzas and are told it will take at least 30 minutes.

After about 40 minutes we receive our pizzas.

I ordered a vegetable pizza named “The Lou.”

The first thing I notice is that this is an extremely small size pizza. It looks child’s size to me.

My pizza with filled with fresh mushrooms, spinach mix that looked sort of grey, vine ripened Lou’s tomatoes (that were good), cheese blend (mozzarella, Romano, Cheddar) and topped with roma tomatoes (sort of unripe) in what they call Butter Garlic Crust.

You don’t pick up a slice and eat this pizza. You have to eat it with a knife and fork. I try a little end of the crust and it’s thin and fried pie like almost like a crostata. ( a crostata is made with olive oil based dough) The bottom of the crust is slightly thicker but still thin and is more pizza dough like. I don’t get the butter taste it almost seems more like dough that’s fried in oil….

I like the taste of the cheese blend and I also like the fresh mushrooms and vine ripened tomato sauce.

My husband tries the Malnati Chicago Classic. It’s a similar pizza but filled with lean Lou’s Sausage, vine ripened tomato sauce and cheese blend. The sausage is very lean and slightly dry. This pizza is very mildly seasoned.

Lou Malnatis is the first of Three BIG Chicago Chains of Pizza restaurants to open in Metro Phoenix AZ. (the other two chains are opening soon within the year) You might want to give them a try if you want to take part in all the hype about Chicago Style Pizza.

For more information please visit www.LouMalnatis.com

The Forking Truth