The first Giordano's was opened on February 1974. They served a variation of their mother's deep-dish, double-crusted pizza, which she made on Easter and stuffed with ricotta cheese. The pizza recipe has been changed several times based on customer surveys. Today, they serve both deep dish and thin crust pizza. You have your choice of toppings such as sausage, spinach, pepperoni, mushroom, shrimp, ground beef, green peppers, fresh tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, onions, black olives, fresh garlic, broccoli, green olives, anchovies, pineapple, and Canadian bacon. The small plain serves one to two people and costs $8 for the thin and $12 for the deep-dish. We got the small spinach deep dish for $15. The one thing you must remember when eating here is that since the pizza is freshly prepared, it takes about 30 minutes for your thin crust to be ready or 45 minutes for your deep dish to be ready. You should order a light appetizer for your wait time. Salads are about $5 and the mozzarella sticks and stuffed mushrooms are $6. I was disappointed that they didn't include some free bread sticks to chew on because of the long wait time. It is one of the suggestions I emailed to them. If you go to the Jackson Boulevard location, you probably could order the pizza and come back after seeing the Sears Tower.
If pizza is not your cup of tea, there are salads, pastas, and sandwiches to choose from. But why would you come to Chicago and not try a deep-dish pizza? That is kind of like going to Philly and not trying a cheesesteak.
When the pizza finally did come out, it looked huge. The small deep dish really does serve one to two people. It has a lot of cheese, which I love, but it had too much sauce, which is sweet. I scraped that off and ate the rest. I finished my half of the pie, but my mother was struggling to finish the first slice of hers.
The service was good and our pizza arrived as ordered. However, the table behind us ordered a spinach deep dish as well, but the waitress screwed up their order and gave them a plain. They knocked off a couple of dollars for them for the mistake. I don't think I would be too happy, even with a discount, after a 45-minute wait.
Overall, the pizza was okay and the service was good. However, the original Pizzeria Uno, which I visited twice the last time I was in Chicago, is my hands-down favorite for deep-dish pizza. I didn't eat there because I wanted to see what other deep dishes were out there.