Lou Malnati's Pizzeria — Restaurant in Chicago

The deep pan pizza was nice!

We were visiting Chicago and Chat GPT recomended this as a good restaurant to have deep pan pizza.

We turned up without a reservation one evening at around 7pm and were told it would be a 30 min wait or 2 seats at the bar. We decided to sit at the bar. The bar man was very busy and we sat for a while while he ignored us and was clearly overworked. I leant over the counter to pick up a menu for us to make peruse while we waited. The bar man turned around, slammed his hand down on the menu to stop me lifting it. He then looked me directly in my eyes and said - ‘has no one ever taught you it’s rude to lean over a counter’. For a second I thought he was going to hit me, he was a very angry, very large man. I had only stretched my arm forward to pick the menu up. I was grateful my partner was with me so felt secure that if this bar man raised his hand it would be stopped. I used my instincts to smile at him and try to calm him down in what felt like a dangerous situation. I said I was sorry, that I could see he was busy and was trying to help. It’s like switch flicked in his brain. He let go of the menu, tried a forced smile and gave us 2 menus to look at. Letting us know there would be a 40 minute wait for pizza. I asked my partner if we should leave. He said the guy was clearly overworked and he felt sorry for him and now we were here we should eat. My partner is also a large man and doesn’t feel fear in the same way most women do when intimidated by an aggressive larger person like that. I put it to the side and we continued with our evening. As I said in the beginning. The pizza was nice. It was heavy. I could only eat one slice. My partner really enjoyed it. Hopefully the bar was short staffed on that night and that’s not how people are normally treated at this venue. I have to assume that is the case and ChatGPT seems to like it 😂 and there are lots of good reviews. It would be a shame for one man’s actions spoil someone else’s business. It wasn’t a great experience but the venue and food...

The disgrace of Chicago. How can this place be so bad and still have 4 star with thousands of reviews.

First of all, we came here to try out the deep dish pizza thinking that we will be treated as a guest that we should be. We have a party of 7 and made a reservation for 8:30pm. Our whole party got here at 8:15pm, the front staff told us to wait. So we waited until 8:30 and we still there was no response. Another 15 minutes went by and we already went back a few times trying to see what’s the problem with getting our table. There’s already a few party that came after us and got seated immediately. We still haven’t been seated for 40 minutes now and we wanted to see if we can order the pizza first and then get seated later and we won’t have to wait too long for the pizza. But the staff said it won’t make a difference if we order now or later. But no. It definitely did. We finally got seated after waiting for 45 minutes of being in the establishment, then we got to the table and we were seated at the back of the restaurant and isolated from the rest of the restaurant. At this point I don’t know if it’s racism or not because we are a group of Asians. The table we got seated is already fully busted and so is the bigger table next to us. We could have been seated way earlier. But no. We were mistreated. We have to go to the manager multiple times to discuss this issue and situation. We came here for a birthday celebration for our friend but no, not only was she unhappy , pissed af, and she have to ask for the food to be discounted her self instead of the store offering ways to compensate the terrible expensive we had. After the food finally came , one of the two pizza were UNDERCOOK. It was just not it. At that point, we are all pissed and especially the birthday girl. The only good thing the manager did is the compensate the whole meal after we have to express all our disappointment for the 5th time.

If you can avoid this place. Please do and go to...

UPDATED REVIEW - Aug/2025: Came in for lunch on a weekday - They seem to be VERY BUSY here all the time, so be sure to make a reservation. I had a reservation and arrived about 20 mins early and was seated within about 5 mins after arriving. Of course, it takes about 40 mins or so to make their pizzas (and they're well-worth the wait!), because of this, it would be great if they offered the ability to pre-order online before I arrive, so i can sit down and only wait a few mins for the food to come out.

Anyway - my issue with this particular visit is that we each ordered a personal size deep dish pizza and asked for extra tomato sauce on them, but the pizzas we got barely had the basic amount of sauce on them, yet we were charged for the extra sauce - ridiculous! The pizza tasted good, but I will say that I prefer larger size pizzas as small pizzas don't seem to have the right amount of crust/dough, sauce, topping, etc and this was a great example of why I feel personal and small pizzas are vastly inferior to a large size pizza. Very disappointing.

Nov 25, 2024 Review - It’s been many years (probably 12) since I’ve been to a Lou Malnati’s, but over those past many years, I’ve been ordering it frozen to enjoy at home, since we don’t have this pizza chain in VA. But coming to Chicago I looked forward to going back and the food definitely didn’t disappoint!

Service definitely lacked luster though, they had the attitude that they’re providing the best deep dish pizza, so you need to put up with them. Pizza also takes about 45 mins to make and be served. In the meantime, we ordered a salad and it was quite nasty, with bagged lettuce (at least it tasted that way), which wasn’t very fresh. But when the pizza came out, it was game on and that pizza was amazing! Get it with extra tomatoes, it tastes even...