thin is in... as in pizza

The article is to some degree comparing apples to oranges.

Chicago-style pizzas were developed as a meal in a dish. It was not designed to be fancy, but rather an inexpensive filling meal - and it is. I won't argue whether it's a pizza or a casserole (my vote is for "pizza").

The spots he's mentioning for the thin pizza are bars, some restaurants where the pizza is more of an appetizer dish, and a very few restaurants - all places where nobody would normally want to eat a deep dish pie!

On a side note, I personally think this "trend" started with a lot of chains; a half-dozen that I can think of have wood oven or specialty thin pies as appetizers, and at least some of the restaurants mentioned developed artisnal thin crust pizzas as an up-scale response to these (after seeing that customers were ordering the thin crust versions, why not give them a "good" thin-crust?). I know, for example, that this is one of Rich Melman's specialties (taking an idea from competitors, improving the product, and then re-introducing it in a new restaurant).

Found this on Yahoo news...I gather this is a frozen entree as opposed to something straight from the pizzaria.


1. WORST PIZZA IN AMERICA
Uno Chicago Grill Chicago Classic Deep Dish Individual Pizza
2,310 calories
165 g fat (54 g saturated)
4,920 mg sodium
120 g carbs

This individual pizza has been named Worst Pizza in America three years in a row now, but Uno Chicago Grill doesn't seem to care--all they've done to minimize the epic impact of this monstrous meal is to change the nutrition labels on their website to reflect the calories "per serving," instead of the total calories per dish as a whole. What's revealing about that slight of hand is that it shows that Uno knowingly sells an individual pizza that actually has three servings' worth of calories, fat, sodium, and carbs. This one individual pizza has more calories than you should eat in a day and more than two days' worth of sodium. (That's as much salt as you'll find in 27 small bags of Frito Lays Potato Chips!) The only way to go at Uno is to steer away from the infamous deep dish Chicago-style pizzas and opt for a flatbread pie instead.

Found this on Yahoo news...I gather this is a frozen entree as opposed to something straight from the pizzaria.


1. WORST PIZZA IN AMERICA
Uno Chicago Grill Chicago Classic Deep Dish Individual Pizza
2,310 calories
165 g fat (54 g saturated)
4,920 mg sodium
120 g carbs

This individual pizza has been named Worst Pizza in America three years in a row now, but Uno Chicago Grill doesn't seem to care--all they've done to minimize the epic impact of this monstrous meal is to change the nutrition labels on their website to reflect the calories "per serving," instead of the total calories per dish as a whole. What's revealing about that slight of hand is that it shows that Uno knowingly sells an individual pizza that actually has three servings' worth of calories, fat, sodium, and carbs. This one individual pizza has more calories than you should eat in a day and more than two days' worth of sodium. (That's as much salt as you'll find in 27 small bags of Frito Lays Potato Chips!) The only way to go at Uno is to steer away from the infamous deep dish Chicago-style pizzas and opt for a flatbread pie instead.

Only one comment: there is absolutely no commonality between the pizza one gets at Uno's in Chicago and what one gets either in a grocery or in one of the chain restaurants around the country. I don't know the details (likely someone here will) but it appears that the family sold the name for a franchise operation and for a grocery operation, but kept it for Chicago (even the frozen pies you get in Chicago are totally different - and significantly better - than the frozen pies you get here).

I really don't know the fat, salt, et al counts for the restaurant pizzas in Chicago, but believe me one doesn't go for deep dish pizza while on a diet!

The article alluded to this as well and it is something my wife and I have wondered about lately. We've seen places locally serving a lot of flatbreads. Some are really not pizza, or anything we'd think of as Italian or akin to Italian, but some definitely are. Is there a trend in restaurants to do the same thing they (OK bars are to blame as well) did with cocktails so that almost all martinis referenced on a menu are really cocktails? Why don't they just call a thin-crust pizza what it is?

it's all about marketing.

To take it one step further, nobody will pay $12.95 for an appetizer pizza, but for a "specialty flatbread topped with artisan mozzerella, aged pepperoni (realize that by law ALL pepperoni is aged), et al" the money is no problem and the product can be whatever you want it to be (as noone has expectations as to what a "specialty flatbread" might be)!