Eating a Chicago-style pizza is an essential tourist requirement, one also being satisfied at another table of young musicians – these a group of jazz students from Vanderbilt in Nashville.
Pequod’s Is a Favorite for Chicago-Style Pizza, Thanks in Part to Yelp and 'The Bear.' We Went Behind the Scenes
Kathleen Hinkel
October 7, 2025
Pequod’s Pizza has been named the best pizza in America on Yelp and appeared on 'The Bear,' and continues to draw both tourists and locals for its Chicago-style pizza. Credit: Kathleen Hinkel for WTTW
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All photos by Kathleen Hinkel for WTTW.
You’re in Chicago for one of the most stressful events of your life: an audition with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) that could net you a tenured, union job with a renowned orchestra. This trip could determine the rest of your life and career.
What do you do to relax while you’re here?
Gorge on an unholy amount of caramelized cheese, buttery carbs, spiced meat, and sweet tomatoes in the form of a Pequod’s pan pizza. At least that’s what the CSO hopefuls pictured above did on a recent Monday.
What “Chicago-style pizza” is, of course, is hotly contested. Many locals claim the cracker-thin tavern-style they eat at birthday parties as the true Chicago pizza, but most people visiting the city are looking for homegrown deep dish or its subcategories of stuffed and pan.
Pequod’s Pizza serves pan pizza at its two locations. (More specifically “pan-style deep-dish pizza with a caramelized crust,” according to its website.) Its signature is a blackened halo of crisp cheese ringing the top of the crust, accomplished by layering slices of cheese on top of the crust and beneath the toppings around the edges of the circular pan in which it bakes.
Instead of going to one of the many locations of the chains Lou Malnati’s or Giordano’s, or the birthplace of deep dish, Pizzeria Uno, visitors like Dallas’ Sara Hernandez and Alan Perez have chosen to try Chicago’s famous pizza at Pequod’s.
“It’s phenomenal,” says Gregory Williams while taking a photo of a slice. He was in town from south Florida with Derek Coger for business. “Best pizza I’ve ever had.”
The sentiment isn’t unusual. In 2024, Pequod’s was ranked the number one pizza in the country on Yelp.
The Chicago location, which opened at 2207 N. Clybourn Ave. in 1992, has appeared in such shows as Somebody Feed Phil and The Bear, getting a cheffed-up treatment at a fine dining restaurant to satisfy some tourists who have yet to try Chicago pizza in the latter.
Between those citations and plenty of local accolades, Pequod’s has become ultra popular, with more and more tourists arriving since The Bear appearance and Yelp award. Manager Sean Asbra, who has worked at the Chicago location since it opened, recalls a time when they had local regulars who perched on used cases of Miller Lite for want of seating during Chicago Bulls games in the Michael Jordan era.
Pequod’s is named after the doomed whaling ship in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick. The original location, still open today, was opened in Morton Grove by Burt Katz at the beginning of the 1970s. Pequod’s website sets the opening in 1970; Katz himself testily told a Chicago Tribune reporter in 2011 that it was in 1971. “I don’t care what they say,” he said.
Katz devoted much of his life to refining his pizza recipe with its unique caramelized crust, starting at the Inferno in Evanston in 1963 and founding Gulliver’s on Howard Street in 1965 before opening Pequod’s in Morton Grove and then selling it to Keith Jackson in the mid-1980s.
“The crust is not a platform for the ingredients,” Katz told the Tribune in 2011. “To taste my pizza, you have to eat the crust of my pizza. Eat the whole damn thing, please! Otherwise don’t eat it.”
Supposedly, the Pequod’s recipe hasn’t changed much since Katz’s reign, although that 2011 Tribune piece says its sauce has become sweeter than what Katz served at his final restaurant, Burt’s Place in Morton Grove.
Katz opened Burt’s Place a block away from the original Pequod’s in 1989, and ran it until 2015, a year before his death. (It has since reopened.) Anthony Bourdain visited Burt’s Place for his show No Reservations in 2009, and told the Tribune for Katz’s obituary that, “His was the only deep dish pizza I ever loved.”
The skepticism about deep dish is common, as infamously expressed in a Jon Stewart rant in which he slandered it as a casserole. But it doesn’t stop people from coming to Pequod’s. “I don’t know if you can call it a pizza, though – that’s a meal,” said Gregory Williams, he who also called it the best pizza he’s had.
Locals benefit from a $8.95 individual pan pizza lunch special.
And tourists continue to pour in, often accompanied by a local – Monica Takahashi brought her San Francisco cousin.
“They’re always excited to be here, which I love,” says Emma Wakefield, who has been working at Pequod’s for two years.
As with so many beloved spots, it’s not just the food that makes Pequod’s, according to Wakefield. “My coworkers are the coolest thing in the world, and that’s my favorite thing about Pequod’s.”
