The Chicago Restaurant That Put Deep Dish Pizza On The Map

The fight over who "invented" certain foods is almost always a fool's errand, as history, marketing, and personal aggrandizement mix to create impossible-to-verify legends. But for Chicago's famous deep dish pizza, we can at least know the restaurant where it originated. This is partly due to the recency of its creation. Pizza itself dates back in different forms hundreds if not thousands of years, with even the modern version being created in Naples in the 18th and 19th centuries. By that standard deep dish is a veritable baby, being first served in 1943 in Chicago. It was first created and popularized in the kitchens of Pizzeria Uno. 

As for who actually did the inventing, that's harder to sort out. Pizzeria Uno opened in 1943 at 29 East Ohio Street and still stands in that spot today. Pretty much every source agrees that deep dish was born at that location. Founded by Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo, the eatery used to be known as The Pizzeria and Pizzeria Riccardo. It wasn't named Uno until a second location named Pizzeria Due opened in 1955. Uno names Sewell as the developer of the style. However, others credit Riccardo, as there is evidence that Sewell didn't join until 1944. Complicating things further, neither Sewell nor Riccardo were chefs. They were businessmen, and some rivals claim the actual minds behind deep dish were early cooks hired by the team.

Several other pizza chains in Chicago trace a legacy from the first deep dish pizza, although none claim to be the birthplace. Among the plausible contenders for the title of deep dish inventor are Pizzeria Uno manager Rudy Malnati Sr. and Alice May Redmond, a cook from Mississippi who worked at the restaurant. Both were actual pizza makers, unlike Sewell and Riccardo. Malnati claimed he was the originator of the recipe along with Riccardo, while pizza expert Peter Regas has uncovered evidence that Riccardo's original pizzas weren't much like the deep dish of today, and Redmond developed the current, deeper form.

As deep dish pizza exploded in popularity at Unos in the '50s, both ended up splitting off and contributing to rival restaurants. Redmond was poached by two business partners, and she along with her sister Ruth Hadley made the pizzas for Gino's Pizza in 1954. Now called Gino's East, it's the second-oldest deep dish pizza restaurant in Chicago. Malnati actually spawned two chains: One was Lou Malnati's, founded in 1971 by his son who worked with him at Unos. The other was Pizano's, founded by another son from a different marriage in 1991. No matter who at Pizzeria Uno first made a deep dish pizza, the restaurant was not only the birthplace of a new American classic, but also the starting point for four of the most popular deep dish pizza chains in the city.