Who's Got the Best Deep Dish Pizza in Chicago? Pizzeria UNO, Gino's East, Lou Malnati's, or Giordano's?

On my last trip to Chicago I decided to try to find out who had the city's best deep dish pizza. I became inspired to take on this challenge after watching a rundown on Chicago pizza on the Travel Channel. I decided to hit up the same restaurants as the Travel Channel reviewed: Pizzeria UNO, Lou Malnati's, Gino's East, and Giordano's. The only difference is that in my rundown there are going to be some winners and losers.

So here's how the story went...

I arrived in Chicagoland for a short three day trip. I knew I couldn't eat at all four pizzerias in such a short stay, but luckily I could get a couple of these wonderful pies delivered right to my hotel room. First on the list was Giordano's:

Giordano's

My first night in town I ordered pizza delivered to my hotel from Giordano's. I was pretty excited about this pizza since it was going to be my first deep dish of the trip. The thing about Giordano's is that their pizza comes with a slight twist. It is a stuffed crust pizza with a whole layer of cheese on the bottom. I wasn't sure if this extra layer of cheese was going to make it better or worse than the other pizzas, but I went ahead and ordered a small pepperoni and sausage stuffed pizza to give it a try. 

One hour later this work of art show up at my hotel room:

(Side note: These pizzas take a long time to cook so one hour delivery is the norm.)

I ate as much as I could, which wasn't a whole lot. This is a very filling pizza. Everything was good, the cheese, the sauce, the bread, everything. And while everything tasted good, it wasn't great or phenomenal. I wanted a deep dish pizza that was going to make me say, "Holy Crap! This is amazing!" This was not that pizza.

My other complaint was the stuffed crust. Yeah I know its what they are known for but here's my problem: It makes the pizza feel unbalanced. There's too much cheese and it just makes the pizza too rich to enjoy. Overall though I thought it was a good, but not great, pizza.

Pizzeria UNO

The next day for lunch I was off to Pizzeria UNO. This is like the deep dish pizza mecca. This is the place that deep dish pizza got started way back in 1943. Eating here is like being a part of history. However, just because they were the first deep dish pizza place didn't mean they were still going to be the best deep dish pizza.

I ordered the individual pepperoni lunch special, which I just want to add comes with a soup and a drink for less than $12 - how great is that!

I can't even begin to explain how great the crust was! Out of all the pizza on this adventure UNO's crust was by far the best. (A little side note: The water from Lake Michigan is rich in minerals making it great water for bread making. This is why the deep dish pizzas here in Chicago are better than anywhere else in the country.)

Overall the sauce, cheese, bread, pepperoni - they all blended so well together. My only complaint, and it really is a minor one, was that I wish the sauce was a bit saltier and more flavorful. However, as good as this pizza was I still felt something was lacking.

Gino's East

The next day for lunch I went to Gino's East. The build up to this meal was monumental. I had heard a stranger raving about it to her friends at the mall a day earlier. As soon as we walked in you could see thousands of names marked on the walls from all the satisfied pizza eaters that had been there before.

Even as soon as we sat down a group of girls at the table next to me had just finished eating and was having the waiter take their picture. These were all good signs.

I ordered a half sausage, half pepperoni pizza. One hour and a couple beers later this magnificent pizza was presented to me:

This was one incredible tasting pizza. It was salty, flavorful, well-balanced. It was everything I could want in a pizza. The only downside to this pizza was that UNO's still had them beat on crust. Other than that little complaint this pizza is the best in Chicagoland, hands down.

I finished and walked back out onto the street. A girl was walking by and pointed at Gino's. "Is this a good place for pizza?", she said. I busted out laughing. Gino's is better than good, Gino's is phenomenal. I could have been hit by a car after that meal and died a happy man.

Lou Malnati's

It was my last night in Chicago, and I had one more deep dish pizza left to eat. Lou Malnati's was calling my name, and I was hoping that maybe this last pizza might just be better than all the rest.

I ordered an individual pepperoni with their famous deep dish buttercrust. I started to eat with the best intentions, but I was disappointed. This was a very average pizza. The ingredients seemed to conflict with each other. There were very unbalanced flavors in this pizza. So unfortunately the last night of my deep dish pizza adventure in Chicago ended with disappointment.

My Overall Ratings:

So if you are looking for an overall great pizza experience in Chicago I definitely recommend going to both Pizzeria UNO and Gino's East. I actually think Pizzeria UNO is the best if you take into account the ambiance, side dishes, and service. (I can't speak for Giordano's or Lou Malnati's since I didn't eat at their restaurant.)

Based on pizza taste only Gino's East was my favorite, closely followed by Pizzeria UNO. Third place was Giordano's followed lastly by Lou Malnati's.


Contact Info:

• Gino's East of Chicago - 633 North Wells Street - www.ginoseast.com
• Pizzeria UNO - 29 East Ohio Street - www.unos.com
• Giordano's - 730 North Rush Street - www.giordanos.com
• Lou Malnati's Pizzeria - 439 North Wells Street - www.loumalnatis.com 

Axiom 14: A Guide to Higher Education

"The purpose of primary education is the development of your weak characteristics; the purpose of university education, the development of your strong."  -Nevin Fenneman

"Never let formal education get in the way of your learning." -Mark Twain

"It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." -Albert Einstein

When my father graduated from college in 1974 only 11% of the people in the U.S. had a college degree. He told me how employers were lined up on campus at the job fairs ready to hire new grads with actual good paying jobs. Times were good then, and I was always brought up that getting a college degree would put me on easy street.

Now let's fast forward to 2003 when I completed my undergraduate degree. The job fairs were an absolute joke, and my fellow classmates were pursuing teaching jobs after failing to find anything in the private sector. I sent out 50 résumés only to receive one internship offer. I was starting to question if the whole college thing was overrated.

On the surface the value of an actual bachelor's degree in society has gone down in value. New online universities and government loans have made it accessible for almost anyone that wants to go college to be able to do so. Couple this with an emphasis of pushing a college education over trade schools and we now have record university enrollment nationwide. Now there are about 30% of people in the U.S. with a college degree. Can someone say education bubble?

More people with college degrees means more competition for the same jobs. It means companies can pay less for better talent. It means with over 9% unemployment nationwide that if you are just graduating college there are probably people way more qualified than you fighting for the same job. It means you'll have to work harder and try some less traditional methods for that piece of the American dream.

A college degree has gone from being a prized asset in itself to a simple general admission ticket to the business world that doesn't always work. You'll have to find other ways to use college to increase your perceived value in the business world.

Here are a few suggestions:

• The value of your degree is inherently tied to the reputation of the university you attend as well as what you study. Choose your school wisely. An online-only university may have a very low value even if the education is of a very high quality. Compare this perceived value with some of the Ivy league school and the differences will be obvious. Choose the best combination of degree plan and college. A theater arts degree from Harvard is just as useless as MBA from a no-name online university.
• Use degree scarcity to your advantage. The harder a degree is to obtain the less competition you'll have finding a job and the more money you'll make.
• An easier degree is not necessarily easier. Degrees that are easier to get (like Liberal Arts) have less value and higher competition in the business world. That being said you don't have to force yourself to try to get a science degree if you are an artist at heart. Just understand you may have to rely on your skills rather than your diploma to find a job once you graduate. 
• Use Hyperspecialization. Use a unique combination of multiple areas of study to make yourself more valuable and create a sub-category that you can be the best in. So, for example, instead of marketing yourself as a general business major market yourself as an international business major that is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. 
• Go for the skills, stay for the diploma. The diploma will eventually help you get past that glass ceiling in the business world, but the skills you'll learn could inevitably prove to be much more useful. For people that want to learn certain skills but lack the structure and self-discipline to learn on their own college is the perfect place.
• Don't break the bank. Every dollar you take out in student loans has to be paid back. You can't wipe away student loans even in bankruptcy. A good rule of thumb is to not take out more in loans than your expected average yearly salary in your field of study.
• Go one step further with your education. A master's degree is quickly become the new bachelor's degree. I'm seeing more and more job ads that put a strong emphasis on hiring people with graduate degrees. If you can afford to go to school longer consider getting your master's degree. You'll go from a pool of 30% of people with bachelor's degrees to a pool of 8% of people with master's degrees.
• Use the informal job market. If you feel that a college degree won't open any opportunities for you consider using your relationships to search for a job in the informal job market. There is a great article about that here.
• Don't use college as a crutch. College is a great choice if you are young and you're not sure what you want to do in life. It can expose you to different ideas in a structured environment that most young people need to learn. However, I will say that college isn't the best choice for everyone, nor is it guaranteed that you will find your true calling simply by going. If you already know what you want from life, and you have the motivation to acquire the skills outside of college and become successful, it doesn't make sense to invest the time or money in a college degree.    

You should go to college if:

• You want to pursue a career in science, mathematics, accounting, medicine, law, engineering, or architecture.
• You are young and smart but lack the self-discipline to teach yourself outside of a classroom environment.
• You can attend for little or no debt incurred, or you are going into a field with proven earnings potential that will allow you to pay back any loans in a timely manner.
• The university is the most accessible place for you to learn a particular skill, and they can offer resources unavailable anywhere else.
• Going will allow you to move to a particular city of interest, get a fresh start in life, escape from a bad situation at home, or leave behind friends that are a bad influence.
• You're not sure what to do in life and want to be exposed to many areas of study.
• You want the personal satisfaction of having a college diploma and the time and money invested are not an issue to you.
• You will be able to network with people of interest.   

College may not be right for you if:

• You want a diploma in liberal arts, business, marketing, advertising, communications, English, theater, music, history, or foreign language.
• You're older than 25 and you are using college solely to escape the real world so you don't have to find a full-time job.
• You really don't want to go, but someone else is forcing you to.
• You're going simply to get a diploma under the false pretext that you'll be rich when you graduate.
• You'll take on massive personal debt to get educated in a field with low average earnings potential.
• You are highly ambitious, self-disciplined, and have the resources to educate yourself and become successful on your own.
• You are a wild child and are going mainly for the parties.
• You want to go into a field that would be better suited (and cheaper) to study at a trade school.
• You are already very successful in your career and see a college degree as a security blanket. (Your current skills are probably more valuable than a college degree.)
• You have a better opportunities available to you such as the chance to study under a master of the field you are interested in, or travel the world.

In the next Axiom I will cover how to use the Harvard approach to learning, and also give you some ideas on adding some killer things to your résumé.

Useful Links

• Percentage of adults with college degrees by location (1940 - Present)
• Average earnings by educational attainment (2008 Census)
• Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings (2002 Census)
• Average annual salaries listed by field of study

A Little Something You Won't Learn From Your Stockbroker

There's an interesting little phenomenon out there in the stock market you've probably never heard of known as the Halloween Indicator.

The theory is that from May 1st until October 31st the stock market generally goes down and from November 1st to April 30th the market goes up. While I've yet to read any convincing causes for the reason behind why this happens, a historical examination of the Dow seems to prove this hypothesis right.

If you took $10,000 in 1950 and invested in the NYSE index only on May 1st and sold on October 31st every year until 2009 you would have taken a loss of $424. On the other hand, if you did the opposite and invested on November 1st and sold on April 30th you would have a generated a return of $534,348 during that same 59 year period. 

November 1st has just passed and again the trend held true this year. If you had bought the market index on November 1, 2010 (DJI - 11,024.62) and sold on May 1, 2011 (DJI -12,807.36) you would have seen a gain of 13.9%. Likewise from May 1, 2011 (DJI - 12,807.36) to October 31, 2011 (DJI - 11,955.01) the market fell 6.6%.