I love pizza. I love pizza so much that I can’t even compare it to any other kind of food. When you visit Chicago, you eat pizza. We set out to eat as much pizza as we could the weekend we were in Chicago. Not just pizza, we set out to eat anything good that we could for the whole weekend. Wonder why I signed up for Diet Bet? It’s because I ate/drank/inhaled cheese, bread, dessert, beer and fireball the whole weekend.
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I will recap our highlights of our eating adventure.
1. Gino’s East. It’s one of the famous ones in Chicago, so we obviously headed there as soon as we got checked into our hotel. We were so excited to have some beer pizza. We ordered some fried ravioli while we waited for our pizza to cook. We enjoyed some local beer and were just plain happy to have a warm place to hang out and escape the wind. Our pizza arrived and we took some photos and ate some bites.
So, now I know that I don’t really love deep dish pizza like I do Green Mill pizza with green peppers and cheese on it. Too much cheese and too much sauce. Not giving up though. I knew I needed to give it another chance. The beer was great though.
2. Cheesies. What is this you ask? It was one of the 2 best recommendations for non pizza that we received from my new friend, Steph at Bourbon & Glitter. Also, did you know that there is a national grilled cheese day? We happened to walk into a bar/restaurant that specializes in grilled cheese sandwiches on national grilled cheese day. 20% off our tab. Awesome.
I had a macaroni & cheese sandwich. Yep, it was sandwiched between two slices of texas toast. It had a side of tomato soup to dip it in. You mix that with Abita Purple Haze and I was a happy luncher.
3. Lou Malnati’s Pizza. This was THE deep dish pizza that everyone talked about. I wanted to give it another chance and this was definitely a step up from Gino’s. The pizza didn’t have as much “stuff” on it and there was a much better ratio of sauce to cheese to crust. Plus, the service was unreal. We had the best server ever. This was a much better experience. That being said, I still don’t think I need to eat deep dish pizza on the reg… or ever. I’m not that big of a fan. I prefer regular hand tossed crust. Sorry Chicago.
Maybe I’ll try again someday. Problem is, most are stuffed with meat, so that doesn’t leave me many options. The beer is always good though. Props on that.
4. DIMO’S PIZZA. Thank you for being the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten. Yes, I was drunk so that helps make everything taste a little better, but this is hands down the best thing we ate. We tried a few different slices of “regular” normal people pizza. Obviously, sticking with the bread & cheese thing, I ordered Mac & Cheese pizza. We also got a slice with mozzarella balls, tomatoes, spinach and avocado slices on it. Amazing. We topped it all off with a slice of S’mores pizza. Yep, I’ll take another 10 slices of that.
If you are ever in Wrigleyville (which you should be at some point in your life), you must find this place and eat everything in sight. We stuck with the vegetarian, obviously, but they had chicken & waffle pizza, BBQ potato pizza and philly steak pizza. Check out their pizza porn.
On top of all that bread and cheese, we also consumed cupcakes at Sprinkles cupcake ATM and cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory (key lime, yes please.) We ordered breakfast as room service which was unreal. We had an unreal brunch at Rockit’s on our Sunday Funday. Vacation = food. Do it.
Also, I recommend fireball on vacation and for any special occasion. So much fun to be had.
Linking up with Helene for Travel Tuesday!!
Chicago on Dwellable
all this food looks soooo freaking amazing! i'm hungry now! haha
OMG YUMMMMMM!!!!
Pizza is my only food group too. 🙂
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago but didn't try deep dish until my late teens. I LOVE Lou Malnati's. Mainly for all of its cheesy goodness.
Next time, you should go on an Italian Beef walk-about (unless you are a vegetarian…if that's the case then you should go to Fannie Mae and get a box of chocolates instead).
Oh this is perfect! Did you see I mentioned a Chicago trip on my blog today?! I'm def pinning this for reference when I finally get there!!
Your trip looks a lot like my past few! Lou's is excellent pizza, and I'm obsessed with Sprinkles Cupcakes! 🙂
I was just commenting on someone else's blog this morning about Chicago pizza! My favorite is Lou Malnati's and Giordano's. I seriously fantasize about Chicago pizza.
Gino's, to me, is ok but their garlic breadsticks are out of this world.
It all sounds epicly delicious (LOVE Sprinkles), but mac n' cheese grilled cheese!?! It's like all my childhood dreams have come true!
The mac and cheese one is my favorite, followed closely by the frenchie, which is just a baked potato on a grilled cheese. That place is delicious, I'm glad you guys liked it too!!
I've only been to Chicago twice and I've had Gino's East and Cheesie's and have to say both are ah-mazing! I didn't try the Mac and cheese one though so that's next on the list.
i want to go to Chicago SOO bad (even more so now!)
everything looks delicious!!
Sounds like my kind of trip…food heaven! Haha!! Glad you did all the research, now I need to head back to Chicago to hit up your recommendations! S'mores pizza = YUM!