Barone’s Pizza of Glen Ellyn — Restaurant in Glen Ellyn

As a Chicago native, honestly I think this is my favorite deep dish pizza. Leagues better than Lou Malnati's (personally I've never been fond of them), and a good 5-10% above Nancy's.

The crust of their Pan and Stuffed pizzas is divine. I almost want to say it has the texture of beer bread. Each bite is a richly thick mouthful, with the excellent flavor of butter, melted mozzarella, and a hint of garlic. When I first tried it, I was skeptical. Surely I'd have heard of them before now if they were any good? One bite of the crust, just breaking a piece off with my fingers, and I was hooked.

They give generous amounts of cheese on all their pizzas, and doubly so for the Stuffed version. The Stuffed version even has toppings in the crust!!! I wouldn't say the pizzas are smothered in toppings, but I haven't felt like I was getting stiffed on topping quantity so far. A very reasonable amount for the roughly speaking $2 per topping they charge. Sauce is chunky and flavorful, and they don't give too much to the point where everything is soggy, but enough that I was happy.

They have an excellent topping selection, with a wide range of vegetables and meats. They even have goat-cheese. That's an unusual topping for a pizza place to offer, but I really enjoyed it and have ordered it twice so far.

Prices are quite good. Their largest pizza with 4 toppings is under $30 after tax. Its a 14" pan pizza that takes almost an hour to cook. Just to make sure you understand how big this is, it has 8 slices, and I can barely finish 2, if I'm lucky, and I can eat a lot!! My group fed 9 people with 3 pizzas, and we took at least a whole pizzas worth home.

I've also tried their Tuscan salad, I wouldn't say it was the best salad ever, but it was pretty good. Compatible with, e.g. an olive garden salad. But with bacon. Bacon is good!

I've been a little let down by the dining experience other than the pizza and salad, though. Their dining room is on the cramped side. They're seem to be set up as more of a delivery and pickup establishment first and a dine in second. The waitstaff seems a bit overworked, given how cramped their dining room seems to always be. While I don't want to directly say anyone did a bad job, it would be nice to get a little bit more attention while dining.

They offer bottles of water on the tables, which I LOVE. I hate having to wait for someone to refill my glass. I mean. Come on, I know how to pour water. BUT the bottle runs out after 2-3 refills, and then it can take a good 5-10 minutes for a server to come back around to see if you need any more water.

So I guess room for improvement on the in-house dining experience.

I don't really find their bread to be very appetizing. Its free for the table, so I can't say its a dealbreaker, but it would be nice if they had something different..by comparison, for example, I quite enjoy the bread served at Biaggis in Naperville on rt59 and 95th, or Corinos "Country Italian" which has several locations throughout Indiana. By comparison. Barones bread seems bland, hard, and not so appetizing. They do serve it with butter, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese. So its not unsalvageable.

I've tried their cannoli once as an after dinner desert. The filling had good flavor, but the shell was noticeably stale and bland. My guess is that they made it much earlier in the day, and I ordered it pretty late at night, so it had probably been sitting there for a while.

The wait staff attentiveness / dining room crampedness, plus the bread, plus the cannoli are what lost Barones one star off of my review. Clearly their pizza is just that good if they got 4 stars almost entirely...

Love this place. They have fantastic pizza and it's always been consistent since I first had it 15 years ago. Until tonight. I had my rating at 5 stars and had to knock it down to 3. I ordered an 18" party size half cheese and half pepperoni with extra cheese. The first pizza we picked up was burnt and was lacking cheese. The bottom was partially black. So I called and spoke to the manager. He fixed our credit for our order and sent out a new pizza to be delivered. The pizza came fairly quick and the driver was polite. I proceeded to check the pizza only to discover that the cheese had all slid to the middle somehow during the delivery process I I'm assuming. Picture above. I called the driver back inside to view the pizza for himself. He said that we could keep this pizza and they would remake one for the 3rd time. Now we wait after speaking with Tara, (owner) over the phone about our not so good experience this evening. Also Tara claimed the driver told her it wasn't that bad and not to worry about it, and the driver telling us something completely different. Problem rectified but a hassle non the less. The third pizza arrived swiftly by the manager. Needless to say it's perfect as expected. He came in to ensure of our satisfaction. Will continue my business with Barone's in the future....

It saddens me as a resident of Glen Ellyn to write this review but I hope it serves as a wake up call. This is not a one off order either as the last handful of orders were the same. We ordered a pizza and fried zucchini tonight and pizza order was a thin crust with pepperoni and half black olive and onion. Strike one was the whole pizza had pepperoni black olive and onion. Strike two the fried zucchini was flavorless and soggy. Strike three aside from the toppings being wrong, the undercarriage had no support, no crunch… if this were pie cut the toppings would be on your lap. What does this mean? There’s no variation in texture so it just feels like mush chewing on it. The toppings, cheese, and sauce have good flavor but it’s ruined by the soggy floppy crust. In the past I’ve had completely undercooked deep dish so I’ve been turned off to those , but everyone raves over the thin crust. I used to cook pizzas at a small Italian restaurant and the owner always emphasized the crust being the right consistency. It’s a minor detail but soooo important. Maybe the ovens are not turned high enough? I have no idea to be honest but I don’t think the quality here is what it used to be. I much prefer a Rosati’s pie any day of the week as they’re consistent and have a...