Review: New tavern pizzas are having a moment in Chicago, from Bungalow by Middle Brow to Pizza Matta and Professor Pizza
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The tavern pizza is having a moment.
That is, new school, Chicago-style, thin crust, square cut, tavern-style pizza. But that’s a mouthful. So let’s call the pies — historically perfected by Vito & Nick’s on the South Side and Pat’s on the North Side — new tavern style for now.
Unless you’re calling them art. And you may, from culinary to painterly, provoking thought and emotion. At three restaurants, they’re transcending the traditions of the crackling crusts.
The new tavern styles at Bungalow by Middle Brow, Pizza Matta and Professor Pizza speak poetry in pizza.
Do note, I did not star these reviews, because they focus on each establishment’s new tavern-style pizzas, not their other styles, and typically I fully dine twice before rating.
Bungalow by Middle Brow
Pizza as thin as an actual cracker. Almost as thin as the butcher paper on which it’s served. As thin as an abstract expressionist canvas. You’ve never seen pizza as thin as this. And yet, it’s dimensional, holding and hiding flavor within crisp and pliant layers.
The new tavern-style pizza at Bungalow by Middle Brow is executed so exquisitely that it’s a communion with the spirit of a classic Chicago-style thin crust.
“You close your eyes and you’re seeing checkered plaid tablecloths,” said Pete Ternes, owner and co-founder of the beloved neighborhood business in Logan Square. He’s also the creator of their tavern pie.
Bungalow, the rustic restaurant side, led by executive chef Pilar Duplack and chef de cuisine Carolyn Centofanti, makes the pizza, but only on Tuesdays. (They otherwise offer farmhouse Neapolitan pizza.)
Middle Brow, the original brewery and newer winery side, named by the James Beard Foundation last month as a semifinalist for Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program this year, opened in 2019.
Back to that crust. “It’s almost, almost like laminated dough,” Ternes said. If you cut into it, he said, and look at the layers in the light, some are like flaky croissants, but the exterior crackles.
The sauce is almost a quintessentially Chicago tavern tomato sauce. Fragrant, from “tons of dried herbs,” he said, but brown butter too. That last ingredient is not traditional, and adds an elusive nuttiness.
And then there are the toppings. The menu typically lists just four: cheese, veg supreme, pepperoni, sausage, and sometimes seasonal specials and chef collaborations.
“Pepperoni beats everything else,” said Ternes about their bestseller, except for perhaps a popular special.
I say get the sausage, traditionally the top topping in Chicago. At Bungalow, it’s sourced from a mix of Midwestern producers, including Slagel Family Farm in Fairbury downstate and Beeler’s Pure Pork in Iowa. Somehow the chefs load lovely chunks of sausage across the whisper crisp and cheesy crust.
The pizza was inspired by two places on the South Side and south suburbs, said Ternes, where he ate all the time growing up, but he doesn’t think either place would accept the nod. “Because they’re quite different from what we’re doing,” he said.
One is Palermo’s, with its sweeter sauce. “It’s a great Depression-style tavern pizza,” he added. The style has a thick sheet of cheese, he said, over a strong, but still thin crust. “Their paper-thin crust is probably triple the thickness of ours,” Ternes said. When he had that pizza the first time, he said, it was a revelation, which pushed him to the extremes of the thin side.
They just kept trying to go thinner and thinner and thinner. “Sometimes I consider kicking up the thickness a pinch because it’d still be freakishly thin,” Ternes said. “And it might be easier to manage the crispness, but it’s kind of fun.”
Part of that fun is their tiny square cut, about a quarter of the size of the average square-cut slice, sometimes called a party cut. That tiny cut came from Papa’s Pizza, a location now closed in Oak Forest.
“I am again going way too far,” Ternes said. “On our best nights, when we can cut as small as possible, when we’re not completely crushed, it’s way smaller than Papa’s ever, ever was.”
It’s a silly detail that transforms the veg supreme, covered with crisp green peppers, onion and mushroom. It’s surprisingly their second most popular tavern pie. “Growing up I avoided that like the plague,” Ternes said. “But there’s something super satisfying about the flavors now. They’re so nostalgic.” I agree, especially as someone who hates how most green peppers are prepared. “Everyone has said the same thing,” he added. “Like, I hated this my whole life. Why is it so good?”
It’s so good largely because of the fantastical crust. Bungalow uses flour from Meadowlark Organics, “kind of a wild organic farm in the Driftless region in Wisconsin and it changes every four months,” Ternes said. The dough now cold cures for four to five days. “It gets super crisp and super, super, super crackery and develops this amazing kind of funk,” he said. They ferment with sourdough yeast too, as with their remarkable bread.
This is not a pizza for everyone. It can take over an hour for pizzas to come out on a night with 200 to 300 orders. On a recent visit, two pizzas came out fast, but were ringed around with burnt edges.
Those edges feathered away, though, when I picked up the coveted triangular corner slices. And I wondered if Jackson Pollock ever worked in pizza.
2840 W. Armitage Ave.
773-687-9076
Open: Tuesday 2-10 p.m. for tavern-style pizzas
Prices: 16-inch tavern pizzas, $21 (cheese), $23 (veg supreme), $25 (pepperoni or sausage)
Noise: Conversation-friendly
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on single level
Pizza Matta
“We started doing pizza with chef Mike Gaia at Giant over the pandemic,” said Jason Vincent, nominated for the James Beard Outstanding Chef Award in 2022.
Then the space next door to his critically acclaimed Giant in Logan Square became available. “I asked Mike if he wanted to hunker down and do a pizza restaurant,” Vincent said.
The answer was yes. But when Gaia and business partner Josh Perlman asked if they wanted to open with tavern style, Vincent said no.
“It’s not something I grew up on,” he said. “Tavern style isn’t a thing in Cleveland.” And it seemed like it was everywhere after a New York Times story. “I didn’t want to be a trend chaser,” he added.
Nevertheless, the pizzeria opened last April, but the tavern style didn’t start until Mondays in September, then every night since late October.
The new tavern style at Pizza Matta has become a modern Renaissance masterpiece, rich with reclaimed history, fennel-seeded sausage and gloriously good cheese.
Pepperoni vies again for the topping top spot with sausage and giardiniera.
They also buy their sausage from Slagel Family Farm, but add 40 grams of whole fennel seed for every five pounds of sausage. “There’s a place in Cleveland called Geraci’s that I grew up on,” Vincent said. “And this was absolutely ripping off their sausage, because theirs was crumbly and loaded with fennel, and it’s the best.”
The chef also fully credits Billy Zureikat, the home cook and muscular dystrophy advocate. He helped them work through the tavern style and develop the recipe. Dough with a long and slow fermentation aided by cornmeal retains excess moisture so the crust is not steaming the pizza as it cooks.
Instead, it’s remarkably crisp with a sourdough tang.
Pizza Matta uses a build-your-own model rather than signature pies, and redefines the idea of a plain cheese pizza.
They sprinkle grated Romano cheese right on the sauce, add a few fresh mozzarella balls and then shredded Grande mozzarella, Vincent said. “And then when it comes out we finish it with Sarvecchio from Wisconsin, which is just gorgeous cheese.” So sweet, sour, salty and umami, he added.
There’s just one 16-inch size, and I do wish there was a smaller pizza. That cheese is $22, not an expensive tavern-style pie for its ingredients by an award-winning chef. I asked Vincent, why is it so big?
“You are the first person I’ve heard say it’s not expensive enough,” he said. “I’ve gotten into many internet fights about the costs.”
“I’m like, dude, I don’t dictate how much they charge me for cheese. I mean, look at inflation. People have health insurance, you think that doesn’t cost money?”
The dough structure is also good at that size, he added.
A 16-inch pizza is an extra large from my regular neighborhood Chicago pizzeria, starting at $17 for cheese.
That $5 difference at Pizza Matta is worth every cent.
3211 W. Armitage Ave.
773-661-6521
Open: Monday to Friday 5-9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday noon to 9 p.m.
Prices: 16-inch tavern pizzas, $22 (cheese), $27 (sausage), $30 (sausage and giardiniera)
Noise: Conversation-friendly
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on single level
Professor Pizza
Tony Scardino, better known as Professor Pizza, is indeed the chef and owner of his namesake pizzeria that’s become known for making not just tavern style, which he calls cracker thin, but deep dish, New York and Detroit.
Scardino has only operated as a virtual restaurant. Last summer he moved to a rooftop kitchen in the West Loop, now offering takeout only until the weather permits patio seating. None of that hinders him or his team, led by executive chef Michael Sundstrom.
The new tavern style at Professor Pizza balances the artistry of Parisian pastry with rosettes of whipped ricotta among toppings that our Chicago pizza founders could never have imagined.
“It’s the closest interpretation of art that we know how to be a part of,” Scardino said.
His deluxe pepperoni is also a bestseller, along with the topping I recommend: deluxe sausage and peppers with the whipped ricotta, basil chiffonade and sweety drop chiles.
It’s stunning, but far from simple, a loaded landscape punctuated by tiny sweet red peppers below clouds of ricotta cheese, grounded by a cracker-thin crust.
It’s nothing like the pizza Scardino grew up eating in the northwest suburbs at Bill’s Pub. That was long before he studied under 13-time World Pizza Champions winner Tony Gemignani in San Francisco. Professor Pizza started making his own tavern style almost two years ago at Humboldt Park Eatery.
His dough undergoes a 24-hour fermentation, he said, passed through a dough sheeter with heaping handfuls of cornmeal with a little bit of sourdough starter.
But he also picked up a parbake step in San Francisco, he added, unique for this style of pizza. They also use a new cup and char sausage from Hormel. With surprisingly dull brown edges and meat, I’m not sure that either technique or ingredient help the pizza made with such a dedication to deliciousness and aesthetics.
Professor Pizza clearly knows his stuff, and the importance of tavern style in the pizza pantheon.
In the last 10 years, he said, It seemed like if you were going to be a part of the artisanal pizza scene, you had to be doing something indigenous to Italy, Napoletana or Romana.
But we are in a new pizza era.
“It’s really cool to see the regional American styles getting some love, and Chicago is central to that conversation for sure.”
406 N. Sangamon St.
312-661-5319
Open: Tuesday to Sunday 1-9:30 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: 12-inch cracker thin pizzas, $22 (cheese), $25 (sausage), $26 (deluxe sausage and pepper)
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