Chicago Pizza

When we were up in Chicago last week, we had dinner one night at Lou Malnati's-- famous for their deep-dish pizza. Absolutely delicious pizza from the first bite till the last... so good that the crust just could not be left on the plate. (Which is what I usually do with all pizza crusts.)

This past weekend, as we watched the Chicago White Sox beat the Chicago Cubs (how did that happen?) we got to thinking about deep-dish pizza. Could there possibly be....

We found Star Pizza near downtown Houston. Our friends K & B had told us about Star, and B used to live in Chicago years ago, so she knows good pizza when she has it. So that's where we went for lunch today-- Star Pizza. We must have passed that restaurant dozens of times and not paid much attention to it-- a green and white restaurant that was once a private house. Handpainted tables and booths inside, tables outside on the porch, and the pizza aroma gets to you as soon as you get out of your car.

We ordered a deep-dish pizza, half of it topped with spinach and cheese for me, the other half topped with different kinds of meat for my husband. As we sat there waiting for our Chicago-style pizza, we could smell other pizzas as they were carried out of the kitchen. Could they possibly taste as good as they smelled?

We weren't disappointed. This pizza was as delicious as Lou Malnati's, and by far the best pizza we've had since leaving New York in 1993. I told my husband that the two Italian restaurants (one near our home, the other in Galveston) can no longer be our pizza source. From now on, we've got to drive downtown to Star pizza. Either that, or fly up to Chicago again. (Go Cubs! Come on, Cubs-- Go! Go!)

We came home with a pizza box filled with the pizza slices that we didn't eat at the restaurant. One slice of deep-dish pizza is about all the calories I want for one day. Tonight's dinner will be salad, but tomorrow's lunch will be another slice of that delicious pizza. (Is it tomorrow yet?)