Mention “Chicago pizza” and most people imagine gut-bomb, super-thick deep-dish slices as big as your head. And sure, there’s plenty of that in Chicago, even a few places where the deep-dish option is so good that locals eat more than a slice a year. But as a melting-pot city, Chicago is also home to an incredibly diverse range of pies, from New Haven to Neapolitan inspired. Take a slice of the Windy City’s unique pizza offerings with this guide.

Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co. serves up a pie that’s kind of a cross between a spaghetti Bolognese, French onion soup and a sausage pot pie. This distinctive pizza, which is baked in a ceramic crock, features a hot river of garlic-, onion- and red-wine-kissed tomato sauce studded with Boston butt pork sausage. People wait for hours on weekends, sometimes forming lines as long as half a block up Clark Street, to sample this gem. 

Photo courtesy of Jason Little Photography

Salad-topped hot dogs and deep-dish pizza claim top billing as Chicago’s most-iconic foods, but Italian beef is not far behind. If you’re in a hurry and you don’t have time to make a stop for pizza and Al’s Beef on Taylor Street, hop into Paula and Monica’s; kill two birds with one pizza stone by ordering up their crispy thin-crust combo pie topped with shaved juicy roast beef, fiery giardiniera, garlic and knobs of succulent sausage. It will satisfy your pizza and Italian beef craving in one fell bite. 

Yes, deep-dish pizza is often considered a tourist thing by locals, but if you are local, and you’re craving a pizza so thick you have to eat it with a knife and fork, Pizano’s is the place to go. The tangy, thick crushed-tomato sauce and the crumbly butter crust combo is sensational. There’s also a little history going for this pie: Rudy Malnati Sr. is often credited as the co-inventor of deep-dish pizza at Pizzeria Uno. His son Rudy Jr. carries on the pie tradition here, where it’s rumored that the only people who know the secret dough recipe are him and his mother.