Gentle Reader, I am a Chicagoan.
While that fact has many negatives – almost beyond count – it also comes with some important positives, such as an appreciation for Chicago’s great culinary achievements in the arena of pizza.
Now, we all know there are many kinds of pizza, and most varieties are good if done well (as the saying goes, even bad pizza is still pizza!), ranging from the foldable New York style to the dry New Haven style, from the thick squares of modern Detroit to the original Margherita from Naples that started it all, almost a century and a half ago.
While you can buy all these varieties, and many more, in Chicagoland, our local favorites – the ones that we Chicagoans study, revere, and judge with the seriousness of a wine connoisseur – are the Chicago thin crust (often called tavern style nowadays, always cut in squares), the Chicago deep dish, and the Chicago stuffed pizza.
We all know what a thin crust is (in Chicago, we pride ourselves in making them as thin as possible while remaining structurally sound); today’s column will concentrate on the deep dish and the stuffed varieties.
If you’re from the Midwest, you probably know the difference, but most people from outside Chicagoland may not, so we must spend a moment to define our terms.
The Chicago deep dish was born in the mid 1940s, at Pizzeria Uno on the near north side. While the thickness of both the pizza and the dough have changed over the decades, the concept has remained the same: It’s similar to a regular thin pizza in that it’s a layered product of dough, cheese, sauce and toppings, but the dough is thicker than most other pizzas (though not as thick as a Detroit, which Chicagoans often argue is more of a focaccia), and it’s baked in a steel cake pan, with high straight sides. The dough is stretched up the sides, the mozzarella blend (usually slices, not shreds) is put down before the tomato sauce, and the product bakes slowly to let the crust rise. The pizza is cut in triangles, and requires a knife and fork.
By contrast, the stuffed pizza, while being made in the same kind of high sided pan, is a completely different product. Invented simultaneously by Nancy’s and Giordano’s pizzerias in the mid 1970s (and based roughly on a concept then popular in northern Italy), the stuffed pizza is actually built much like a traditional fruit pie, in that it consists of both an upper and a lower crust, and is filled, not openfaced like a thin or a deep dish.
But the stuffed is made with a different dough – flaky, more like a pie crust. First the bottom crust is placed, then the toppings, then lots of mozzarella, and then a second crust is placed on top, fitted and sealed onto the lower crust at the upper edge. Above this top crust goes the tomato sauce and a final dusting of cheese (the interior cheese is usually all mozzarella, while the top is dusted with parmesan or romano above the sauce). This product still isn’t as high as a serious apple pie, of course, but it’s high for a pizza; cut in triangles and eaten with a fork. It’s filling; most people stop at two slices.
(I feel I must mention that it bears no similarity whatsoever to the concept of the “stuffed crust” pizza, which is just an ordinary thin crust pizza that has had some string cheese folded into the outer edge of the dough, a gimmick which is popular, but isn’t remotely Chicagoan in nature).
Now then. Why, you ask, is this on my mind today, other than to make everybody hungry?
We have noticed a strange occurrence in the past couple of years. Giordano’s chain – one of the inventors of stuffed pizza, remember, not a mere observer – has begun changing their advertising. They no longer consistently advertise themselves as the home of the stuffed pizza. They no longer boast stuffed pizza on their menus or their signage.
Instead, in most cases, they refer to their product as deep dish.
It’s not.
The product is still stuffed pizza.
But in the website, they now alternate – without rhyme or reason – between calling it stuffed and deep dish. And on the menu, they don’t say the word “stuffed” anywhere.
Look at their menu, or the sign above the door, and it says “Giordano’s Famous Deep Dish Pizza.”
As you’ve seen above, the two products are very different. The one is a thick single layer pizza with a high edge, the other is literally a filled pie. Both are delicious, but they are different, and – most importantly – they have different names that clearly tell the customer what they offer.
For fifty years, Giordano’s was proud of being a trailblazer of the stuffed pizza. Lots of other pizzerias copy it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of here. It’s a great product. Nancy’s – and every other chain that also offers a stuffed pizza – still proudly use the term on their menus.
But Giordano’s doesn’t. They call their product a deep dish, even though it’s not.
It’s still a great pizza, after all. As Shakespeare might ask, “What’s in a name?”
Well, here’s the problem:
For those of us who know already that Giordano’s serves a stuffed pizza, it may not matter to us. We’ll get it if that’s what we want.
But what of those who don’t know Chicago pizzas like Chicagoans do? What of those who have heard about Chicago’s famous thick pizza and want to try it for the first time?
If you arrive at a Giordano’s, and try the “deep dish pizza” on their menu, if you like it, you’ll think you like deep dish when in fact you like stuffed. If you dislike it, you’ll think you dislike deep dish when in fact you’ve still never even tried it.
Yes, they are that different. From a “truth in advertising” perspective, at minimum, this is outrageous.
I don’t know the reason behind Giordano’s antics. I could probably ask someone at Giordano’s for an interview, but what would be the point? My guess is that they think that the word “stuffed” sounds fattening, and they think they’ll get more sales if they quietly remove the word. If that’s their plan, it’s probably working; they have locations all over the place, and they’re always busy. And their product is still a delicious example of the stuffed pizza.
But still. They’re calling it by the wrong name.
So, over the course of time, as they grow, and as more and more people experience their pizza, they will be spreading the error far and wide. They will be responsible for the public misunderstanding two great products; they’ll be responsible for the nation’s diners misjudging two noble culinary stars, out of ignorance. And Giordano’s is responsible for that ignorance.
Now you ask… what is this article doing in a political website? In an election season when we have much more important things to talk about, why are we wasting column inches – and our readers’ precious time – on a local dispute interesting only to pizza purists?
Because words matter. And Giordano’s marketing choice – to intentionally use the wrong name on their menu for their signature product – is a perfect illustration of a foundational problem in American politics today.
In our upcoming election, we have candidates all up and down the ballot who misrepresent not only their own views, but the fundamental laws of this nation, and they get away with it because the American system – from the schools to the media to the pop culture – all support these misrepresentations.
The Democrats say that this election is about “preserving American democracy.” But America is not, and never has been, a democracy. Our Framers specifically designed the country to be a representative republic, with lots and lots of safeguards to keep the nation from ever becoming democratic. The Left has simply misrepresented the nature of this country, and they have been allowed to get away with it.
The brilliance of our Founding Fathers’ design was to protect the people – as much as possible – from the reach of government. The Constitution was designed to enshrine the concept of limited government, with all sorts of walls around every branch, and severe limitations on every official.
The Constitution says that no matter who wins any election, no matter how big or small his margin, he is limited in what he can do. But Democrats tell the public that as long as they win the office, they can put “their phone and their pen” to work and do whatever they want. The schools never told children otherwise, and the media don’t fact-check it, so when these children grow up to be voters, they don’t know that it’s a lie.
The Left tells us that the president has the power to “forgive” private debts between citizens, to waive the immigration rules for indigent foreigners, to tell the automakers what kind of engine to make, and to tell the furnace makers what kind of heat exchanger to use.
In fact, under our Constitution, a president cannot legally do any of those things, because no president can legally exert any power that is not specifically granted to him by the Constitution, or granted to him by Congress (and then only if the Constitution gave Congress such power to delegate in the first place). This is the law, and has been since 1789, but if the schools and media tell you that the imperial president has such powers, and nobody is there to correct them, then a president can indeed get away with violating every law he wants.
A “recession” is defined as two successive periods of negative GDP growth (actual private sector growth minus the rate of inflation), but if we just under-declare the rate of inflation, we can mask a recession indefinitely.
So we do.
A “murder” is defined as the intentional taking of an innocent human life, but abortion can’t be murder if we just define little living human children in the womb as being “not yet human life.”
So we do.
A “legitimate voter” is defined as a U.S. citizen over 18, who lives at a specific address that identifies him as a proper participant in the election of specific legislative, judicial, and executive districts at the county, state, and federal level. But if the Democratic party can’t win an election if it’s limited to just the legitimate voters, they can improve their chances by declaring that it’s racist to demand proof of citizenship, or registration, or location; the Democrats have a better chance if we just allow anyone at all to stuff the ballot boxes.
So we do.
“Retail theft” is defined as crimes that have been reported at stores, whether the perpetrator was caught or not. Rising retail theft is embarrassing. But if we only prosecute crimes of over a thousand dollars each, then all the shoplifting, all the muggings, all the smash-and-grabs under $1000 each won’t get prosecuted; they won’t even get reported, or counted in the statistics. Suddenly, it will look like crime is going down, not up, if we just limit that definition.
So we do.
Words mean things. Lying to the public may not be a big deal at a pizza place, or at a movie theatre, or at a football game.
But lying to the public does matter when it affects our elections, because, as our legacy of limited government has been squandered by generations of malevolent statists, this continuous program of lying to the public about public policy matters enables the ongoing destruction of the noble legacy our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us.
And it’s time we took our language seriously, because at this rate, our language may be all we have left.
Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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