LA has never been and will never be known as prime destination in the world of pizza. Sure, there are some great spots for a variety of pies, but there is no such thing as LA-style pizza. Nonetheless, LA does its best to make transplants from other pizza cities happy. Take, for example, Masa of Echo Park, which dishes out some of the deepest dishes this side of Chicago.

Moreover, they have a pizza that may as well have been invented for unvegans like me. Simply put, it’s called Lots of Meat and is chock full of pepperoni and sausage, with everything else that makes a real Chicago-style deep dish pizza.

Upon opening the box (my buddy picked up the pie), I was impressed to find that while the pepperoni adhered to the Chicago law of toppings under sauce, the sausage did not. In fact, instead of bits of sausage, there was an entire thick layer of sausage on top of the rest of the pizza. This was both fascinating and delicious. What was especially delicious about is was that it gave the eater (me) an opportunity to appreciate each distinct flavor without them all blurring together. As for the non, meat, my only complaint is that at times the sauce was more like a pile of stewed tomatoes than an actual sauce. If you like whole tomatoes that’s great, but if your saucy like me you may find yourself plucking out some tomatoes.

Either way, Masa of Echo Park was a delicious taste of the Midwest and did not fail in delivering a real deep dish pizza.

A long, long time ago, I was a fledgling meat blogger just getting his bearings. In a desperate attempt to eat Giordano’s and get it on the blog, I bought a half-baked pie in Chicago, packed it in ice and brought it back to LA to finish the baking myself. The result was delicious, and while I reviewed it, I always felt that it was unfair to judge a restaurant in which much of the cooking was up to me. Since those days, very little has changed, but my desire for Giordano’s has only grown stronger. So on my last visit to Chicago, I made sure to hit Giordano’s for real, or to at least have some of my family pick it up for me in Evanston.

For those of you that don’t know, Giordano’s is the king of Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Some may dispute my claim and have valid reason to do so. After all, I am no resident of Chicago, but any claims of Lou Malnati’s or Uno having better pizza I can quickly rebuke. So in my limited visits to Chicago, Giordano’s is my go-to deep dish. Chicago-style deep dish is often called more of a casserole than a pizza, but whomever makes such claims are outrageous. It may be thick, the sauce may be on top, but it is certainly pizza.

On this Chicago outing, we ordered one pepperoni and one spinach pizza. I had no part of the spinach, but it is worth mentioning simply because the only thing distinguishing these two pizzas externally was a single pepperoni that Giordano’s had tossed onto the real pizza. I took myself a slice and got to work on the only style of pizza in the world that I condone taking a knife and fork to. It was as glorious as I remembered and brought back a rush of pizza memories. The crust and sauce are what make Giordano’s so good and these were spot-on on this pizza. The crust was hearty, but slightly crumbly and the sauce was just perfect. It wasn’t just some simple marinara, but a thick tomato sauce built for the sole purpose of being a part of a thick pizza.

One thing that was a little strange to me was that the pizza wasn’t quite as thick as I remember. Sure, it was plenty deep, but in my memory a single slice was equivalent to at least three slices of any lesser pizza. Perhaps gravity was a little heavier that day or my memory is not what it used to be. Either way, there was no disputing that this was a delicious way to finish out my weekend in Chicago. No trip to the Windy City is complete without some true Chicago-style deep dish and Giordano’s is pretty much the best way to do it.

EDIT: I haven’t been back since they moved into a real place, but the experience here was so special I’m not sure it’s worth it.

You make a call and show up in a back alley 45 minutes later. When you arrive, your guy comes out carrying about five pounds worth. You hand him your cash, then take your purchase wherever you want and inhale it. If this sounds like a drug deal to you, get your mind out of the gutter. Unless your drug is pizza, in which case you should head to this back alley in West Hollywood immediately. This is the way it works for Hollywood Pies, the sketchiest pizza place in LA you’ve never been to. You may have eaten their pizza, and you may have even picked up their pizza, but you have never been there because there is no “there.”

Two food-loving friends and I converged upon the back alley of Hollywood Pies last night to get a taste of their Chicago-style pizza and to experience one of the most unique food purveying concepts ever devised. Joel had called in our orders in advance because there was a 45-90 minute waiting time for these Chicago-style pizzas. 45 minutes is actually the minimum amount of time I have ever waited for a pizza in this style, which is almost a casserole in style. Many pizzas were named after old Chicago gangsters, which only helped perpetuate the feeling that we were somehow involved in an illicit activity while waiting for our pizzas. Joel and I split a large Capone, which consisted of whole milk mozzarella, mild Italian sausage, margherita pepperoni and house-made Italian meatballs for 24 bucks. On top of that, it was also slathered in sauce and imported pecorino parmesan cheese. Danny ordered the small Hollywood (a lesser-known gangster), which was filled with those meatballs, plus house-made ricotta for 12 bucks. It also had the same sauce and parmesan as the Capone.

After making Hollywood Pies aware of our arrival, we were handed our hefty pies by a friendly pizza-handler. When Danny struggled to carry the things, he told us that the large weighed in at a full five pounds. Awesome!

But where to eat? And how? Chicago-style deep dish is the only pizza in which I not only fully condone a fork and knife, I expect it. But we were miles away from home with no place to seat and no utensils to use. We wandered out of the alley, found some concrete slabs to sit on and then went to work. We lost a few toppings while separating the slices to eat, but managed to lift some giant slices without the need for utensils. Success! When I bit in, I was greeted with that old familiar taste of Chicago deep dish. Starting from the bottom, the dough was thick, but cooked through perfectly. You could tell these guys really cared about their pizzas, as there was a bit of a mesh lining on the bottom of the box to prevent any potential dough sogginess. It had a sort of crumbly texture, but no sign of falling apart. The dough also had a pleasant buttery taste to it. Working my way inside, the mozzarella was gooey, melty and pretty much what you hope for with any pizza.

Then there were the meats, which filled the pizza perfectly. The sausage was definitely mild and hard to distinguish from the meatballs, although they both tasted great. The pepperoni, however, was amazing. It was thick, flavorful and did justice to Chicago’s historical relationship with meat. The three meats really balanced each other out and were so evenly dispersed that there was never any issue with having too much or too little meat. I was also amazed to find that their combination with the mozzarella didn’t give me a sodium overload. This sometimes seems to happen with Chicago-style pizza and I was glad to see that Hollywood Pies had avoided this pitfall.

Finally, the sauce and the parmesan cheese were like the perfect icing to my cake of a pizza. The sauce had a nice little spice kick to it that was just kind of saying, “Hello, I’m dancing on your taste buds,” without doing any sort of fire damage. It was actually so subtle that it didn’t distract at all from any of the other well-balanced ingredients. The parmesan, while delicious, was ultimately just parmesan cheese. It was certainly a necessary component of the pizza, but didn’t stand out at all.

My only problem with this entire undertaking was that I had little to compare this delicious pizza to. It felt a little lighter than the Chicago pizza of my memory, but perhaps this is just conjecture. There is no doubt that they nailed the uniqueness of Chicago-style pizza and captured some great flavors. Yet, I can’t help wondering how Hollywood Pies would stack up against some of Chicago’s greats. Fortunately, though, they don’t have to, because here in Los Angeles Hollywood Pies is currently the king of Chicago-style deep dish and I fully expect to be back again soon.

As a relatively new city, I haven’t found Phoenix to have their own signature cuisine. Sure, they have some great Mexican food and boast one of the best pizza places in the country, but I haven’t yet found that distinct Phoenician specialty. And to be honest, that’s just fine with me, because I hail from the Midwest and apparently so do a lot of the restaurant owners in Phoenix. On my last visit, I had Coney Dogs that tasted straight out of Detroit, and this time I had myself a taste of Chicago at Oregano’s.

With locations throughout Arizona, Oregano’s has certainly found itself a lot of patrons in need of some Chicago-style food. I was ready to join their ranks. We went to their Phoenix location and even on a Monday afternoon had to wait for a table. This was a good sign. While waiting, I perused the menu and found their Chicago-style Stuffed Pizza (with Wisconsin cheese!). I was excited to find that their cooking time was a full 45 minutes, which was just what I would expect at Giordano’s in Chicago. Just as I was about to place an early order on the pizza to ensure my group didn’t have to wait, we were seated.

I still decided to quickly place my order and ended up going with their 8″ pepperoni pizza. Usually I would be worried that 8 inches wouldn’t fill me up, but if this pizza was going to live up to its Chicago stuffed expectations, it would be more than enough food. The waitress asked me if I had ever had this pizza before and I proudly said I had, but in Chicago. She still reminded me that it was chock-full of cheese and was really salty. Music to my ears. Although I knew it would be filling, because of that wait time we ordered some half cheese, half regular garlic bread to share with the table.

The bread came out pretty soon and was just massive. This did not bode well for me saving room for the pizza. I preferred the cheesy end over the regular, but both were quite good. I was also happy that it was truly garlic and cheese sauce on a huge roll, rather than an essentially sauceless pizza (which always tastes good but leaves me wondering why I did not simply order additional pizza).

After the obligatory 45 minutes, my Chicago-style pizza came out and look just like that pizza I used to find five hours from home. But would it taste as good as it looked? In a word: Yes! Now it’s been a couple years since I’ve eaten Giordano’s, but this tasted like I remembered. The pizza was oozing with cheese and required a knife and fork to eat. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I relished in the random bursts of pepperoni that were 8 inches thick and chowed down on the crust as soon as I had cut away the rest of the piece. So this is what heaven is like?

Now I’m sure that if I had eaten at Giordano’s the day before, I could have found differences between the pizzas, but this was neither here nor there. After two pieces, I was one stuffed an happy unvegan. It was certainly a pizza to make Chicago expats happy and certainly one worth eating for anyone in Arizona that wonders what a true Chicago-style pizza tastes like.