From the Chicago Pizza Project Archives: Pat's Pizza

The Joint: Pat's Pizza; www.patspizza.info

The Dish: Pat's Pizza has long been a standby for Chicago's north side thin crust pizza lovers and is consistently ranked as one of Chicago's best thin crust pizza joints (and Roger Ebert's favorite pizza according to Pat's website).

A few years back, Pat's moved from its old home on Sheffield to a new location on Lincoln Ave just south of Diversey in Lincoln Park. While Pat's scenery has changed, lovers of Pat's pies need not fret because its pizza is the same as ever: thin as hell and addictive once you get in a groove.

For our visit to Pat's, we had 10 piehounds (with a couple possible late arrivals) and decided to play it safe by ordering 5 large pizzas. While the waiter opined that a large pizza would feed 3-4, we thought that considering the cracker-thin crust of Pat's pizzas, it would really only take 2-3 Piehounds to scarf down a large pie. And guess what, we were right - while we had some leftovers, if we had ordered 3 or 4 pies according to the waiter's suggestion, our order would have been light for sure. As for the pies themselves, we had a couple meat, a couple veggie, and a special, and the overall opinion of the crowd was that Pat's is a top-flight spot for Chicago's unique cracker-thin bar pizza.

Things at Pat's weren't all aces though. There were some grumbles at the table regarding one of the veggie pizzas with sun-dried tomatoes as the tomatoes overpowered everything else about the pie and were really not too tasty. There was also some talk about whether the pizzas were cooked enough. My practice is to generally order thin pizzas well-done or easy well-done to prevent getting undercooked, sloppy middle pieces, but during our visit we thought it best to go with what the kitchen gave us as there were some fears that ordering Pat's super thin pies well-done could be dangerous. After our experience and much reflection, on my next visit to Pat's, I'll order meat pizzas well-done and leave the veggie pies to the expertise of the pizza artists in the kitchen.

So there it is, you heard it here, from the experts, Pat's still puts out some of the best super-thin crust pizzas in Chicago.

Chicago Pizza Project rating: 3.5 greasy thumbs out of 4