Last week I stopped in for lunch at Lou Malnati’s and had a personal deep dish pizza, a Chicago Classic, which is basically cheese, chopped tomatoes and sausage on Lou’s trademarked Buttercrust.
I like it fine – in fact, it really hit the spot – and I posted a picture of the pizza on Facebook.
There are a lot of Lou Malnati fans out there, and one of the people who responded to the Facebook picture of my pizza was a friend of mine, also named Lou. I greatly respect Lou’s opinion, and he posted that the “sausage crust” Malnati’s pizza was “like magic.”
I had never heard of such a thing, so I called the Oak Park Lou Malnati’s and was informed that the pizza with a sausage crust is actually what they call the “crustless” pizza, but it’s not on the menu. It’s intended for those who are trying to cut down or cut out the gluten in their diet
Now, secret menus are a common feature of some Asian restaurants in Chicago: there’s frequently a regular menu for non-Asians and a “secret” menu that contains items that the restaurant believes will appeal more to their Asian customers. We’ve found such menus at many Thai places, including Yum Thai in Forest Park.
So I was pretty excited to learn that Lou Malnati’s had a secret menu, though I know of only the one item on it.
I stopped by Malnati’s to pick up a “crustless pizza,” and here’s what that is: it’s the regular cheese and chopped tomatoes with choice of toppings (we went with spinach and mushrooms), all set on a disk of sausage about one-quarter inch thick.
“Do people ever order sausage on their crustless pizza” I asked the guy who took my order.
“Oh, sure, lots of people have sausage on their sausage crust pizza,” he replied, which kind of amazes me.
If I were gluten-free, I would definitely consider getting another crustless/sausage crust pizza, but man, this was one dense high-protein belly bomb. I had 1.5 slices and I was full for the next 12 hours.
My daughter, Josie, commented that the crustless/sausage pizza would have been better “on a slice of bread,” which really underscored for me the importance of crust. Malnati’s Buttercrust is maybe best part of the pie. I like the cheese and tomatoes, and the sausage crumbles are okay (a little under-seasoned for me), but it’s that crust that provides balance not only to the flavors but to the textures, adding crispness to play against the gooiness. Without the crust, everything kind of dissolves into a tasty mess; with the crust, it’s a composition.
