Chicago vs New York Pizza is the Wrong Argument

It’s April Cools! It’s like April Fools, except instead of cringe comedy you make genuine content that’s different from what you usually do. For example, last year I talked about The best introductory video games for non-gamers. This year I’m picking a fight.

This is “New York” Pizza (NYP):

Flat pizza, soft bottom, hard crust, foldable wedges. It’s the archetypical American pizza style and probably your pizza emoji.

This is “Chicago” pizza:

Thick crust, high edge, sauce above cheese. “Deep dish” is not the only kind of pizza style that comes out of Chicago, but it’s the iconic one that everybody outside the city knows about, and the one people always use in “Chicago vs New York” pizza arguments. Which usually boil down to Chicagoans saying “Deep dish keeps the ‘toppings’ from sliding off the pizza” and New Yorkers saying “that pile of slop shouldn’t even be called pizza.”

I was going to have a longer introduction but ain’t nobody got time for that. So let’s just get cut to the chase: The two pizzas fulfill such totally different roles that comparing them is silly, and the more interesting comparison is New York Pizza versus Chicago style hot dogs.

We don’t eat deep dish

Think about when you want to eat the two:

1. NYP: You am hungry, you want lunch, and it has been a week since you last had pizza.
2. Deep dish: Some friends or family are in town, you want to take them out for a treat, and you last had deep dish in 2025.¹

In other words, New York Pizza is an everyday food (if not exactly advisable to eat everyday), while Chicago style deep dish is a special occasion food.² For actual everyday eating, we unfortunately have “tavern style” pizza (TSP):

Flat pizza, cracker crust, cut in squares, crispy bottom that makes all of the toppings slide off when you bite it. This is the most popular pizza in Chicago and the kind they serve at events. That’d be a better comparison with NYP except 1) it’s arguably more “Midwestern” pizza than “Chicago” pizza³ and 2) I hate it.

So we need a “role-equivalent” of the NYP: a food that’s iconically Chicagoan and also can be eaten as a lunch.

And that’d be the Chicago style hot dog.

Dragged through the garden

This is a Chicago style hot dog:

There’s some variation, but the core of it is an all-beef sausage, mustard, tomatoes, sports pepper, celery salt, relish, pickle spear, and poppy seed bun. Chicagoans are fanatically opposed to putting ketchup on it, but you only got one life, do what you want.

This is a much closer comparison to the NYP in terms of culinary role. Now you might reasonably say “ah, but New York already has a hot dog”:

But let’s be honest, there’s a reason that Halal carts outcompeted the NYC hot dog stands.⁴ I don’t know a single person who actually likes NYC hot dogs for their taste, as opposed to nostalgia or city pride. NYC dogs don’t even get their own Wikipedia page, making them less culturally important than the Coney Island dog or the completo.

I guess I have to compare the two now, huh

Kinda wrote myself into a corner here

The two are different enough that we can’t just compare on “taste” and “texture”, so we have to look at other factors. NYP wins on variability and being vegetarian-friendly while the dog wins on complexity, portability, and actually having vegetables. Ultimately, as much pride as I have in my city, I have to favor the NYP for one big reason: it’s easier for me to make at home. If I want a NYP I’ve already got all the ingredients except maybe the mozzarrella, where for a Chicago dog I have to go out and buy the dog, the bun, and half the condiments.

Even so, I think I’m more glad that Chicago hot dogs exist than NYP exists. There are lots of delicious kinds of pizza out there but most hot dogs I’ve tried are “fine” at best. But the Chicago dog? That’s a sausage America can be proud of.

This was mostly an excuse to talk about Chicago foods that aren’t deep dish

The third quintessential Chicago blue-collar food is the Italian beef:

Roast beef, peppers, french bread dipped in the meat drippings. IMO it’s best if you can get it “dry” with the drippings on the side, so you can get the full experience without the whole sandwich losing structural integrity. Supposedly the Jibarito, a sandwich made with fried plantains instead of bread, is a Chicago specialty, but I haven’t actively looked for it elsewhere. Flaming Saganaki is halloumi cheese that is pan-seared and then flambéed. It’s more of a gimmick than anything but it introduced me to pan-searing halloumi, which is delicious and easy to do at home.

Thanks to Jeremy Kun and Predrag Gruevski for feedback and nitpicking my argument and Marianne Bellotti for an April Cools idea that didn’t take fifteen years to research. If you enjoyed this, check out the April Cools website for all the other pieces this year!