La Madia

Before Ken’s high school reunion in Chicago, we went to dinner with some of his friends from high school at La Madia, a pizzeria in River North. His friends had been before and knew exactly what to order – we started with the pizza fondue:

The pizza dough is baked and puffed up and served with a side of the marinara sauce. A good side to start because everyone was able to pull apart the bread easily and get some of the tangy marinara.

We also started with mushroom bruschetta:

The salads were a bit on the plain side (two orders of the organic mixed greens mixed with vinaigrette):

For our pizzas, we ordered the triple Pepperoni – Tomato Sauce & Mozzarella Cheese, finished with White Truffle Oil:

Housemade Fennel Sausage & Sweet Onions – Tomato Sauce with Mozzarella Cheese:

And housemade Lamb Sausage – Fresno Peppers, Caciocavallo Cheese & Mint Salsa Verde:

The pizzas were all good but none of the crusts were really charred enough to have taste. The pizza fondue was actually much better than the pizzas; the crust of the pizza needed much more salt and flavor! We ordered another pie based off some online recommendations (the Taleggio and 3-Hour Roasted Grapes) but I don’t think anyone liked that one (except me!)

The restaurant was super busy that night because it was right around the corner from Ken’s high school reunion so a lot of people ended up going there beforehand. Ken wasn’t fully satisfied with the pizza at La Madia because after his reunion we ended up going to Pizzeria Due for even more pizza! Our original plan was to go to Portillo’s but we ended up getting the deep dish at La Madia because he wanted so much more pizza. Chicago’s thin crust pizza is good but they should definitely work on perfecting their crusts!