CHIReview
photo credit: Kim Kovacik
Professor Pizza has a now-familiar origin story: It began as a home kitchen pop-up, started selling their pies out of a bar, and is now operating out of the Humboldt Park Eatery: a takeout and delivery-only ghost kitchen.
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As Professor Pizza’s name has given away, the focus here is on pizza. They make several varieties (including Detroit, Sicilian, and grandma) but their tavern and incredible NY-style are the main reason you should place an order this instant. The NY pie has a flavorful crust, with a puffy edge and a beautifully charred undercarriage. The cracker-crust in the tavern-style is thin enough to have a snap, but can still hold up to the toppings.
Each style of pie has a lot of creative topping combinations worth your attention (like gyro or mushroom and leek). But even their simple pies—like the cheese made with aged mozzarella, a spicy thick sauce, shaved garlic, and parm—have unexpected complexity. The addition of a soubise base, fried rosemary, and hot honey on their NY-style white pie makes us want to call Infatuation NYC for the sole purpose of bragging that it’s in our city, not theirs. In fact, we’re going to go do that right now.
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Food Rundown
photo credit: Kim Kovacik
Cheese NY-Style
Sure you can go ahead and add pepperoni to the cheese pizza, and it will be delicious. Or, you can bask in the flavorful, red sauce-simplicity of aged mozzarella, shaved garlic, oregano, and parmesan. There are no wrong answers.
photo credit: Kim Kovacik
White Pie NY-style
God, is this a good white pie. It has the usual suspects like mozzarella and blobs of ricotta, but then takes a wonderful left turn with the addition of soubise, shallots, aromatic pieces of fried rosemary, and hot honey. The whole thing is rich, herbaceous, and slightly sweet. Plus, it’s all on a delightful sesame seed crust, which is the pizza dough we didn’t know we needed until now.
photo credit: Kim Kovacik
Sausage And Pepper Chicago Cracker-Style
Piled with mozzarella, sausage, roasted peppers, peppadew, whipped ricotta (along with sauce and parm), we don’t understand how this thin crust pizza manages to stay crispy. But it does, and it’s delicious.
photo credit: Kim Kovacik
Gyro NY-style
While the idea of cucumber on a pizza would normally make us call the police, this complicated pizza actually tastes really good. The gyro meat is tender, and complemented by mozzarella and a variety of toppings, including the aforementioned cucumber, cherry tomatoes, mint, dill, feta, and tzatziki.
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