Summary: Steve stays home in Chicago to talk to the man behind his favorite deep-dish pizza: Rich Labriola. Labriola grew up in the South suburbs, and his father, Danny, ran a pizza joint (thin, tavern-style only). Rich got into the baking business and in 1993, opened Labriola Baking, an artisan commercial bakery, which at one point sold bread to many of Chicago’s best restaurants. He sold the business in 2008, launching a suburban restaurant called Labriola Café and Neapolitan Pizza. But the draw of the city (and deep-dish) was too much, and so in 2013, he launched Labriola Ristorante just off of Michigan Avenue – the heart of the tourist zone. Labriola re-engineered the traditional Chicago deep-dish in a number of ways – adding more corn flour and oil, using imported Pecorino Romano and adding complexity to both his bulk sausage and sauce, by integrating Calabrian chiles to the sausage while using three types of tomatoes, including a mirepoix, for the sauce. His caramelized cheese “frico” or crust, along the perimeter, is reminiscent of Pequod’s and Burt’s – two beloved brands from the Chicago suburbs.
