Savor Scout › Food guides › Deep-dish pizza
How to find good Chicago deep-dish pizza
Chicago deep dish is baked in a tall pan: a buttery, biscuit-like crust, a thick layer of mozzarella, fillings, then chunky tomato sauce on top. It takes forty-five minutes, and a place that serves it faster has pre-baked it.
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What separates a good one from a bad one
- A crisp, buttery crust — Golden and slightly flaky, often with cornmeal or butter in the dough. Soggy bottoms are the common failure.
- Cheese under the sauce — The order is crust, cheese, toppings, sauce, so the cheese does not burn in the long bake.
- Chunky, bright sauce — Crushed tomatoes, lightly seasoned, on top.
- Sausage as a layer — Chicago deep dish often has a whole patty of sausage across the pie.
- A wait — Forty to fifty minutes. Order ahead or bring patience.
What to order
- Sausage deep dish — The Chicago classic.
- Spinach deep dish — Or stuffed spinach.
- Stuffed pizza — With a second crust layer on top, for contrast.
- Tavern-style thin crust — What most Chicagoans actually eat day to day.
- One slice each to start — It is heavier than it looks.
Where to find Deep-dish pizza
Deep-dish pizza is mostly found at pizzerias, so that is where to look. Open listings put 95,250 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
New York, NY 1,180 Chicago, IL 646 Philadelphia, PA 626 Las Vegas, NV 480 Los Angeles, CA 475 Houston, TX 324 Columbus, OH 323 Indianapolis, IN 305
Campuses with the most within a mile
NYU 273 The Graduate Center 259 Touro University 253 New School University 249 FIT 240 Baruch 239
A few to start with
- Little Italy Pizza - Park Place — New York, NY
11 Park Pl, New York - Union Squared — Chicago, IL
125 S Clark St, Chicago - Yummy Pizza — Philadelphia, PA
1500 John F Kennedy Blvd Ste 8, Philadelphia - 322 Pizza Bar — Las Vegas, NV
322 Fremont St, Las Vegas - Universe Pizza — Los Angeles, CA
123 S Main St, Los Angeles - Bombay Pizza Co — Houston, TX
914 Main St, 914 Main St, Houston
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for deep dish, buttery crust and Chicago-style, and separates deep dish from stuffed and tavern-style so you get the pizza you asked for.
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Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX
Related food guides
pizza, Italian beef, New York pizza
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- Where to take friends visiting from out of town
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