GIORDANO’S
areas, expect windows galore; bright but not harsh lighting; sports-tuned TVs; simple tables and padded booths; and white brick decorated with “Giordano’s” written in giant script and “Eat Pizza” illuminated by light bulbs.
I’ll cut to the chase — or what the menu calls its “World Famous Stuffed Deep Dish Pizza.” These feature extra-thick, flaky, golden-brown crusts that taste and look like enormous cored-out biscuits. Topmost on the bread bowls are loads of chunky, tart, oregano-scented tomato sauce resting atop a paper-thin dough layer. Bottommost: more thick crust.
Pizza toppings are baked inside the pies along with a virtual mountain of mostly melted mozzarella. This leads to the cheese forming extraordinarily long strands when servers — who are obviously instructed to do this — theatrically elevate slices before plating them.
The “Chicago Classic” with sausage, and “The Special” with pepperoni, are two specialty deepdish pizzas I tried that also feature interior-dampening mushrooms, green peppers and onions. Both pies had attractive but somewhatdry exterior crusts; cost $20.75 for a feeds-three “small”; and were good if hardly transcendent.
I also tried a Giordano’s “hand-stretched thincrust” pizza ($14.50 for a small one-item) on which delicious Italian-style chicken sausage outshone the bland, crackery crust.
Giordano’s corporate roots are especially evident in other items I sampled from its large menu. These include minestrone soup ($5) that probably didn’t come from a can but could have; lackluster lasagna ($10.95) with a side of spongy, salty meatballs ($3 for three); and an Italian beef sandwich ($8.25) with tender warm roast beef but also cold peppers and jarringly salty au jus oddly served on the side.
Salads are a better bet. My favorite was the pleasantly salty Italiano ($4.95) — an antipastolike production with kalamata olives, banana peppers and slices of salami, provolone and pepperoni. The house salad ($3.95) with fennel curls and radicchio isn’t bad. And except for its soggy diced chicken and a long wait, I enjoyed the hearty chopped salad ($5.95).
Waiting, and sometimes more waiting, is part of the Giordano’s experience. But if you get a “city of the broad shoulders”-style hankering for loaf-ofbread-sized crusts and gobs of gooey cheese enriching familiar pizza flavors, waiting here might be worth the effort.