Pizza has a fierce tradition in New York. Regional styles have long been kept at bay, but the big floppy slice and the Lombardi’s and John’s coal-fired* pies have lately had to compete with a wave of puffball Neapolitan darlings and their topnotch mozzarella. Now there’s a new game in town: Chicago deep dish. Last year, Emmett Burke, who grew up in the Chicago suburb Lake Forest and went to college at Fordham, opened the first New York restaurant to ardently concentrate on the notoriously over-the-top stuffed pizza.

Crowds swarmed. Yelpers judged (“tasted worse than Play-Doh”). Threatened New Yorkers made fun: Jon Stewart dedicated long swear-filled rants on “The Daily Show” to upbraiding Chicago’s “casserole” passing for pizza. Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, sent Stewart a deep-dish pie, which he fed to a dog, who sniffed it and turned away. The extended bit ended in a truce, when Stewart tasted a slice of the Chicago restaurant Lou Malnati’s deep dish on air, and admitted it was delicious. New York pride aside, the reaction to Emmett’s was split: (1) You call this Chicago pizza? and (2) Thank God you have arrived (because Uno franchises do not count).

Taking a few years off from Wall Street to tinker with a recipe he came up with himself, Burke has devised a very savvy replica of the real thing. The crust, with a two-inch edge, is layered first with mozzarella, then toppings—the excellent spicy, fennel-seed-inflected sausage and peppers, onions, and mushrooms are a classic combo. A superbly rich reduced tomato sauce is ladled on top, and it’s all cooked in a cast-iron pan, which is delivered by the waitress with a valiant hoist. While Emmett’s crust has a good crunch, it’s a tad dry, and doesn’t have the sparkly flavor or the sweet olive-oil caramelization of the best Chicago purveyors (which are, basically, the original Uno’s, Due’s, Gino’s, and any branch of Lou Malnati’s). Still, the cheese is tangy, salty, and oozy enough to carry you through to the next time you get to have Chicago pizza.

Amazingly, Emmett’s is charging Wicker Park prices in a prime SoHo location. The small, cozy room has an unassumingly charming dive-bar atmosphere, complete with rusted Pepsi sign and light-up car bumper, as if we were back in Schaumburg. There’s a vast, astute selection of beer and wine and an excellent thirteen-dollar bar burger, with a hefty charred flavor, good cheddar, and a squishy potato bun. The crowds have died down somewhat, and Burke can often be found working the bar and answering the phone. He seems a little shell-shocked by the response, but has nonetheless just expanded his menu, with Chicago thin-crust pizza, an underappreciated gem. A large round cut into squares has a thorough covering of toppings and a crisp bottom that seems as though it came out of a toaster oven. It’s a spot-on execution of another genius food. New Yorkers should feel no shame. ♦

Open weekdays for dinner and weekends for lunch and dinner. Pizza $16-$28, plus toppings.

*An earlier version of this piece misstated how the pizzas at Lombardi's and John’s are cooked. They are cooked in coal-fired ovens.

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