Take Vito & Nick’s, arguably the first—and certainly the longest standing place (vouched for by Dolinsky and Chicago Pizza Tours founder Jonathan Porter)—to offer up Chicago-style thin crust. Third-generation owner Rose Barraco George believes it was her father, Nick Barraco, who originally cut the restaurant’s first pies into squares when they added them in 1946, the year he returned from World War II to take over the business opened by his parents, Sicilian immigrants Vito and Mary Barraco, in 1923. The prices were low, the experience casual. “You ate it on a napkin,” George says of the pizza. Today’s recipe is the same one George’s grandmother created over 70 years ago.

Soon after, other South Side places like Home Run Inn and Italian Fiesta Pizzeria started introducing their own takes on the thin-crust style, and things took off from there.

There are no laws governing the tavern-style recipe, so every place makes it differently. Ask most of the people who make it, and they’ll tell you the desired outcome is often described as “cracker crust.” I’ve described it as a texture with the same snap as matzah, but without the cardboard taste and unforgiving mouthfeel. This is pizza we’re talking about; it shouldn’t be a crust of affliction.

Barnaby’s, for all its sustained success, is sort of an outlier in this respect. The crust on its pizzas isn’t crispy; it looks more like a pie crust and is chewier than you’ll find in most places. Opening in the South Loop in 2010, Flo & Santos is a relative newcomer to the tavern-style game but has one of the best distributions of give and take I’ve had: The middle pieces have some chew and are topped generously (but not too generously) with sauce and cheese, while the outer parts have the right amount of crackle. Executive chef Mark Rimkus says his dough sits anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to achieve that perfect flatness and then gets cooked at 600 degrees. Rimkus, who was raised on the South Side, says his pizzas fit somewhere between Vito & Nick’s, “just not as thin,” and another local institution, Palermo’s of 63rd, “just not as thick.”

A pie from Barnaby’s, with its signature crimped crust. Photo by Arun Balakrishnan

Porter claims that getting the mozzarella from the Mancuso family in Joliet is “essential.” Some restaurants boast of using organic tomatoes in their homemade sauce, while others rely on cans of Stanislaus. Most agree that the sausage, another point of Chicago pride, must come as little hand-rolled gobs with bits of charred fennel seed. (Many tavern pies only have a single topping so the thin crust won’t break under the weight.) George proudly states that Vito & Nick’s has been sourcing its ingredients from the same local family purveyors for as long as the pizzeria has been around. “I only use small independent businesses. They’re not going to change; their name is on that product,” she says. “With big companies, you become a number.”