[Pizza] Giordano's

Restaurant: Giordano's
Cuisine: Pizza
Location: Downtown (Chicago)
Address: 135 East Lake Street
Price Range: $10~15

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very Good 5: Excellent

Food: 4
Service: 3
Ambiance: 3
Overall: 3.5

Extra information:

* Franchise
* giordanos.com
* Open for lunch and dinner

Think about Chicago, think about food...what comes to mind? that one obvious dish? It's Chicago style deep dish Pizza. There was no doubt I wanted to try Chicago style deep dish pizza once I was there and this turned out to be the only restaurant I did some research on before going on my trip.

Giordano's seemed to be pretty popular throughout the city and after talking to a friend who visited Chicago few weeks before I did, did enough convincing for me. This location happened to be the closest one to where I was staying and we only waited for about 15 minutes once we arrived.

Restaurant was filled with bunch of tourists and people taking lunch breaks. Once I walked in, I was sort of disappointed at how franchise'y the restaurant felt. Sure, they are doing well and there are handful of locations throughout, but I do prefer more of a personal-authentic style restaurants.

There was no doubt what we were going to order- and seeing the sizes of pizza on other people's table truly scared me. I knew American portions were ridiculous, but I've never been so scared to see a pizza.

Ordered: Spinach Artichoke Dip 3/5

* Famous spinach artichoke dip served with toasted Italian bread for $6.25
* My friend and I have this thing about spinach & artichoke dips
* When we were roommates back in New York, I was the one to introduce her to it for the first time and she thought it was one of the greatest things ever
* So we had to order this...even though we knew we were in for trouble with the pizza we ordered as a main

* Dip was super rich and thick, with lots of artichoke pieces
* What was disappointing is the bread that came with it
* Bread was dry and there were only 5 small pieces of it
* We ran out of bread with 80% of the dip still left
* Also gives you some soup crackers on the side
* For $6.25 it's pretty good deal
* Maybe too rich of an appetizer to order when going for pizza after

Ordered: 10" Small Cheese with 2 ingredients 4/5

* 10" serves 1-2 people, picked pepperoni and mushroom for $17.25
* This was my first time trying Chicago style deep dish pizza so I wasn't sure what to expect
* Basically a regular pizza but with 5 times more cheese

* Crust is more so crunchy and has a consistency of short bread cookie instead of regular doughy bread
* Cheese was fresh and very stretchy
* Most of the filler was cheese, and lots of it

* We ended up having 2 pieces each and couldn't even touch another
* I am glad I tried it but don't think I will ever have special cravings for them

Summary: If you've never tried Chicago style deep dish pizza, give it a go and you will be surprised by how much cheese you can eat. I didn't feel as gross as I thought I would after eating it and that's only because the pizza was fresh and it wasn't too oily. Service is mediocre since it was a busy lunch hour but if you are a tourist, what do you expect?