Emmett’s

Growing up in central Illinois, I was introduced to deep dish pizza at Papa Del’s. My mom used to have pizza parties for her students and her students would always request Papa Del’s (Champaign surprisingly has a lot of good pizza spots, including Monical’s, Jupiter’s and Papa Del’s). The pizza from Papa Del’s has the best crust out of the places I’ve been to and I once made my friend hand carry a pizza back to me after his visit home. The closest to Papa Del’s in Chicago is Pequod’s, which *might* be better because they add Parmesan cheese to the crust and let it caramelize while the pizza is cooking. Ken and his family grew up eating Lou Malnati’s (and it is really good, I must admit). When Ken and I first met, we shipped Lou Malnati’s to New York so we could have a Chicago-style dining experience while watching a Bears game.

Fast forward to 2015 – I’ve lived here for almost ten years and I have never seen a restaurant serve deep dish pizza in the city. I think Emmett must’ve thought the same thing because he’s from the North Shore area in Illinois and missed deep dish pizza so much that he decided to open a restaurant specializing in the type of pizza he grew up with. We heard about Emmett’s through some friends and decided to check it out on a Saturday evening.

The bar area was pretty packed and the restaurant is kind of small but put our names in and waited for about 30 minutes before we were seated. While we waited, we ordered some beers from the bar:

The pizza takes 30-45 minutes to make because they prepare the pizza to order and we put in our order while we were still waiting at the bar. The pie arrived soon after we were seated:

Ken and I both love sausage, peppers, and mushrooms on our pizza (New York style or Chicago style). The toppings are a bit expensive at Emmett’s, but it’s worth it. Ken and I were both pretty hungry at this point:

Look at the cheese!:

My clean plate:

Someone next to us only ate the toppings and threw out the pies (how rude!) The pizza tasted very similar to Papa Del’s and Pequod’s, although I think it was a little doughy in the center and cooked perfectly on the crust. I really loved the pizza and Ken did, too. Now we can go to Emmett’s instead of shipping Lou Malnati’s to us!