Gino's East

First restaurant of my Chicago vacation, had to have pizza! I've seen a lot of good things so off we went! Place is COVERED in writing everywhere like a dive bar/fudpuckers, but don't let that fool you, food and service is excellent restaurant quality. In-house drinks, I'd recommend taking advantage of happy hour, as they are rather expensive (around 8 dollars per draft), but the drinks are great. Their pizza gave me a great introduction to Chicago style pizza, I ate till I felt sick...and heck, I might go again. My wife ordered calamari, and that was surprisingly good...just an odd choice including the rinds in the fried lemons, so watch out for that. We gave our feedback to the manager, and he was very receptive and even gave us a free round of drinks for our feedback! I recommend this place to anyone wanting to experience Chicago Pizza!

Went with 8 people, quickly sat and quickly served. Pizza was deep dish so it took longer. I was hungry enough to eat my arm, but when it came I was so pleased I waited. You shouldn't be disappointed here. I had the meat pizza, delightful! They offer a variety of beer and wine as well. Nice, clean environment. Service oriented staff.

We had a great waitress (I believe her name was Roxy) at Gino's East. We arrived about 4:15 on a Saturday and were told there was an event, so we needed to be done by 5:30. There were 5 of us so the waitress recommended a DEEPAF pizza. Side note: for those that dont know what that stands for, how do you politely explain that to a customer? It means deep as f$@# We ordered a deepaf spinach mix pizza with chicken on the side. I don't like to mess with my deep dish and I stick to my 4 ingredients: crust, cheese, spinach, and sauce! There were many issues with the delivery of the pizza to our table, but the waitress and manager really took care of us and ended up comping some of our meal, which was really kind of them. We had some hummus and veggies to hold us over. Back to the pizza. When it arrived correctly, it was the best deep dish I've had in a long, long time. Every Gino's East has a little different recipe, and this location is now my favorite. The crust had some crunch along with some soft goodness, so it wasn't overly crunchy. The cheese and spinach were mixed well and I loved that gooey, stringy cheese. Yum! Then the sauce. Oh boy! It was perfect. No canned taste, perfectly balanced between sweet and salty. It was a robust tomato sauce. Seriously, the best deep dish I've had. We ordered another to go even though we were full. That's how much we loved it! If you want to travel with the pizza, freeze it asap so it stays nice and fresh, and when ready to eat, pop it in the oven (Never the microwave!) The last thing about this location was a cool tank top. (See pic) Unfortunately they only had XL, so I couldn't get it. Hey Gino's, if you want to send me a small tank, I would be forever grateful ;) We ended up leaving after 5:30 due to the pizza issues, but management and our waitress were awesome about the whole thing and they allowed us to enjoy our pizza.

I have been there to try a deep dish pizza for the first time. We ordered one small deep dish pizza. (Thank god they had vegetarian options too). it was good enough that two of us couldn't finish the whole pizza. They have graffiti all over the wall by people who visited the place. Highly recommended.