May 27th, 2016
Chicago, IL
We weren’t expecting a non-deep dish pie from Chicago to make it into the Top 10 on the Daily Meal list, but Coalfire Pizza came in at #9. After a day of tourist-ing around town, we walked to the West Town location, where we grabbed a cozy seat right by the window.
We had a hard time choosing which pizza to try here because they all sounded so good. We went with the lasagna pie with Berkshire sausage, which came with these amazing clumps of ricotta on top. We also split a nice salad to start.
As we started to eat, we looked out the front window, and we saw the owner of the restaurant, Dave Bonomi, waving at us and holding up his phone, with our Instagram on his home screen. This was our second time being recognized, and since we only had about 50 followers at that point, we were really excited!
After he said a quick “hi”, Dave left us to finish our pizza, and then also waited while we had some dessert. When we were finally full, he grabbed us and asked if we wanted a quick tour of the restaurant. OF COURSE WE DID.
We felt so lucky to be able to listen to Dave talk about pizza because he was so passionate about it. His pizzas are slightly different than any style that we’ve had. As the name suggests, he uses a coal oven, so the pizza tastes slightly like a New Haven-style, with a good bottom char, but the crust is fluffier and more similar to a Neapolitan, although bigger. We got to check out the coal oven ourselves, and we also saw where Dave stacks the coal that he uses to fuel it. Not going to lie, but coal looks like a mess.
Dave also took us up to the roof of the restaurant, which gave us a great view of downtown Chicago. He told us a bit about the history of the area and the pizza scene in Chicago. He also mentioned a few Chicago classic pizzas that weren’t on our list (although we’ve noticed that a few of these have now made it on to the 2016 list, which means we need to take another trip back to Chicago ASAP).
This was probably our most memorable pizza visit of the whole road trip. Mainly because we got recognized, but also because we got to talk about different styles of pizza and different pizzerias with someone else who knew EVERYONE in the business. We learned so much about pizza and the value of really good ingredients. (Dave gets all of his ingredients locally, where possible, which makes his prices go up, but we agree with him that the taste is totally worth it!)
We loved this pizza so much that when we went back to Chicago last fall, we stopped in again!
In any case, the pizza is awesome here, and the owner is even more awesome. We definitely could see why it ranks higher than all those deep dish pizzas, and how it made it into the Daily Meal’s Top 10.
To visit:
Coalfire Pizza
1321 W Grand Avenue
Chicago, IL 60642
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