Pizza roundup: Lynn’s Chicago Pizza and Novel Pizza Cafe reviews

No matter where you stand on the eternal tavern style versus deep-dish pizza debate, we can all agree that crust, sauce, cheese and toppings must come together in equilibrium to create the perfect, crowd-pleasing pie.

Two new pizza restaurants are playing with those key ingredients and challenging our preconceived notions of what it means to sling Chicago-style pizza in the Windy City. In honor of National Pizza Month, we take a look at Lynn’s Chicago Pizza and Novel Pizza Cafe.

Note that these reviews are unstarred because we only visited each pizzeria once instead of twice for starred reviews. Let’s get this pizza party started!

— Lauryn Azu, deputy senior editor

2 Chicago pizza places for National Pizza Month

Lynn’s Chicago Pizza

The most challenging thing about deep-dish pizza is the slow burn of it all. The bake is slow. The service is slow. Even the eating and digestion is slow. For this and other reasons, it elicits much more debate and controversy than its thinner, pick-up-and-go relatives.

Brightening up 61st Street in Woodlawn since August, Lynn’s Chicago Pizza is trying to convert South Side deep-dish skeptics with small batches of pies and the human touch of a two-person partnership. After experimenting with pop-ups, the pizzeria is the first brick-and-mortar from co-owners Brandon Bruner Sr. and Lynn Humphreys. The store is named after Humphreys, who runs operations and front of house. Bruner, a veteran of Italian restaurants, is the chef and works back of house, making dough, sauce and numerous ingredients by hand.

And the pizza? It’s the result of date night experimentation. Humphreys and Bruner said their favorite takeout pizza to eat together was Giordano’s deep-dish with its thick crust, thick cheese and an emphasis on sauce. One fateful date night, they were struggling to find dining options in Woodlawn, a majority-Black community that has historically been considered a food desert.

“We couldn’t even get delivery (to) our house,” Bruner said.

Deciding to dine in, Bruner began developing a deep-dish recipe. The couple eventually shared pies with friends and family, sold it at pop-ups, and started a business partnership.

But it took some convincing.

“A lot of people kind of turned their heads,” Humphreys said.

“I think people just associate it with going downtown,” Bruner added.

“We have to sell them a little bit,” she said. ”Once they bite into it, we see heads nod repeatedly. We made them love deep-dish; that’s confirmation.”

In addition, they’re hoping to become a community center on a street that they said sorely needs it by hosting DJs, playing movies and acting as a venue. On one Sunday I attempted to order, they were mostly closed for Bruner’s birthday party, but had three hours of limited appetizer service and music.

Deep-dish is the one pizza I like to sit down at a restaurant for — the crispy crust, the bubbling cheese and tomato sauce is part of the experience. But that wait is killer, especially with a small staff. At Lynn’s, they’ve front-loaded the slow burn into online preordering, which initially was a struggle. After four days of failure, I figured it out — you have to plan and reserve one of the limited time slots. I even had an accidental cancellation. Chef Bruner called me, informing me there was an error in their system. He had still made the pizza. It was easy and flexible, talking to a real person. He said I could still pick it up, but if not, he’d refund me and eat it himself. I wanted it hot, so I did a later order.

Bruner confirmed later he did eat the pie. He’s committed to his craft. He also told me he actually recognized my name as a writer. At the restaurants he worked in, they often consulted a dossier of possible reviewers.

The Dorchester deep-dish is Lynn’s signature pizza, with a well-balanced trio of ingredients: house-made Italian chicken sausage, spinach and onions. The sauce was the standout. Some recipes suggest a pinch of sugar in tomato sauce — when I first tasted the wonderfully rich sauce, I detected some sweetness but knew it could not be as simple as processed sugar. Bruner believes absolutely no sugar should go in sauce. Instead, I sensed the natural richness of caramelized onions blended into the sauce. It results in vibrant taste many steps above typical pizza sauces and competes with some of the best pies in the city.

The sausage and garlicky spinach too were nicely complementary and spiced, nestled within sauce and the cheese mixture in a uniquely delicious gestalt.

Lastly, the crust: An over-done deep dish can have the consistency of a cracker-mesh or an overworked dessert pie. Here, there was a nice transition from the crisp of the outside to the tender bite of the rest of the pie, almost like al dente pasta.

It turns out that was an apt comparison: Alongside a heavy gluten flour, Bruner mixes in some semolina flour into the dough, adding additional “body and structure.” He said that comes from his experience making homemade pasta in high-end Italian restaurants.

One notable extra I sampled: a Caesar salad with roasted chicken added on. The greens were as you’d expect from a Caesar, while the chicken had a level of care rarely seen in a pizzeria salad. The thigh meat had a perfect textural crispy exterior and a deep roasty flavor. It would make a wonderful quick meal on days when deep-dish might feel too heavy.

But of course, deep-dish is also very deeply the reason for Lynn’s.

“Our hope is to change people’s minds about deep dish,” Humphreys said. “That’s why we made it the way we made it.”

501 E. 61st St.

lynnschipizza.com , instagram.com/lynnschicagopizza

Open: Monday, Thursday and Friday, 4-9 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, noon to 9 p.m. Limited ordering slots sell out quickly, so pre-order if possible.

Prices: Dorchester Pizza ($30 for a 12-inch medium pie) Caesar salad ($11, plus $3 for chicken)

— Ahmed Ali Akbar

Novel Pizza Cafe

Pilsen’s latest pizza parlor aims to pay homage to Midwestern-inspired pizza and be a hub for creatives, all while maintaining a nostalgic feel and drawing inspiration from the owners’ Filipino and Mexican heritages.

The pizza has built a following among Chicago foodies since they started doing pop-ups across the city three years ago. Ryan Catolico and his cousin, entrepreneur Francis Almeda , who also owns Side Practice in Ravenswood and Drip Collective in the West Loop, joined forces with Enrique Huizar. Novel Pizza opened in June.

Here you can find a variety of tavern and pan pizzas, as well as coffees and teas on the cafe menu.

On a recent weekend visit, I ordered their 16-inch longanisa and giardiniera tavern-style pie. My friend and I had pizza slices to spare in a to-go container, which tasted heavenly the next day straight out of the fridge.

One of Chicago’s most prized condiments is giardiniera , which can be a blend of pickled peppers, celery, carrots and cauliflower. Tangy, spicy and crunchy, it adds another layer to savory dishes, pizza included. Chicago pizzerias have paired sausage with the condiment on thin-crust slices for ages.

Novel’s longanisa and giardiniera pie is its riff on the Chicago classic. Caruso’s Hot Giardiniera is paired with the traditionally red and sweet Filipino breakfast sausage, which gets diced and layered on a yeasty cracker-thin crust, acidic and crunchy in each bite.

“And then the giardiniera is spicy and salty, so it kind of balances the sweetness of that,” Catolico said.

Delicate part-skim, part-whole milk mozzarella binds the chunky topping, tomato sauce and crust together.

“We had to work on it, because sometimes we would put too much cheese, and it would be like a swimming pool because of the oils from the giardiniera and the longanisa,” Huizar said.

The pie was balanced, dense yet not weighed down by its toppings and just spicy enough without going overboard. It was also fun to eat in a cozy environment. I enjoyed people-watching the tapestry of folks coming in, ordering their pizzas and waiting on the bleachers installed in the restaurant, or going for a stroll in Harrison Park down the street and returning. My pizza took about half an hour to cook.

“It’s an old oven,” Catolico said. “So it takes a lot longer for these pizzas to end up cooking.”

The legacy of Falco’s looms large here — Huizar honed his piemaking at the Brighton Park pizzeria. “Enrique has developed this tavern or thin crust recipe specifically for us, working in other places, but also just putting his own twist on things, Catolico said.

Getting more representation of Mexican flavors, and other cuisine traditions reflected in the restaurant’s staff, on the pizza menu is in the future.

On the cafe side, a Tajín-rimmed tamarind calamansi drink is the seasonal agua fresca, representing both Filipino and Mexican foodways, and Filipino specialty pandan and ube-flavored lattes were a part of the opening menu.

Catolico is careful to point out that despite the longanisa-topped pie, they didn’t set out to cook Filipino food at Novel Pizza Cafe amid the rise in Filipino food projects cropping up in the Chicago food scene.

“It was actually supposed to be a rotation pizza, but it kind of stirred up a lot with the whole Filipino boom ,” Catolico said. “So we kind of just hopped on that wave, which helped us tremendously. But I think the thing with Novel (is that) we just kind of want to showcase that we are a Chicago-style pizzeria.”

“Rather than just a Filipino-focused pizzeria, it’s really just a brown-skinned-owned pizzeria,” Almeda said. “I think that’s just something that’s not normal in the industry. So that’s also part of the reason we wanted to open this too, just to have some representation in this industry.”

1759 W. 19th St.

novelpizzacafe.com

Open: Wednesday through Saturday, 9 a.m.-9 p.m., pizza service starts at 11 a.m., open Sunday on occasion, closed Monday and Tuesday

Prices: 16-inch tavern-style pizzas, $32 (longanisa and giardiniera), cheese slice ($7), agua fresca ($5)

— L.A.

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