Home Run Inn Pizza — Restaurant in Lake Township

Home Run Inn just launched their deep dish pizzas and they are currently offering 8" cheese deep dish pizzas for $5 (8-9 if you order a special pizza.) I of course opted to try it out even though I'm admittedly not the biggest fan of deep dish. I ordered hot honey pepperoni and a double play pizza with some hot fries as a side (I felt like going to the morgue today.) Delivery took an exorbitant amount of time. Almost two hours later I had my order which is a shame because it looked like the restaurant made the driver wait almost two hours while they "worked" on it.

As usual the food looks good. The hot fries are indeed hot. It's mainly because of the habanero seasoning since ancho and chipotle aren't really hot. The fries come with two sauces, one of which is cheddar cheese and the other buffalo ranch. They help with the heat of the dish, but these fries are definitely not for the timid.

The pizzas look about as perfect as you can get. Home Run Inn "cauterizes" the top of the frust with caramelized mozzarella cheese which creates a unique ring. Things get hairy once you dive in. Traditionally the cheese in deep dish is under the sauce, even serving as a bed on top of the crust in some cases. Places like Lou Malnati's or Giordano's make sure that there a nice bed of cheese so customers get a good cheese pull. There's nothing of the sort here. In-fact there's barely any cheese. In HRI fashion they took a deep dish crust and dressed it like a normal pizza except they threw extra sauce on top. My guess is this maximizes profits since they don't need to increase their cheese usage.

The sauce itself is bad. You can tell it's from a can with how salty and tinny the flavor is. It's like eating salty pennies. One can definitely see why HRI has made traditional thin crust pizzas all of these years and barely puts any sauce on them. A bit of sweetness comes from the hot honey, but it's ruined by the sauce. The double play is in the same boat with the meat being drowned out by the terrible sauce. Needless to say, but it's bad idea for a restaurant that uses less flavorful ingredients because they want their buttered crust to stand out to opt for a strongly flavored (in a bad way) sauce. It's like cheap Hunt's sauce and it probably is just Hunt's diced tomatoes in a can with sauce which they do indeed sell.

Overall I see why Home Run Inn has lost it's luster over the decades. The competiton out there is just so much better. The buttery crust really doesn't stand out anymore, especially since when you get it from the restaurant it's hardly noticeable. It's like they say "don't meet your heroes in real life" except here just stick to buying the frozen pizzas. I'll definitely be in the freezer aisle because they taste better and are...

I placed an order for pickup at about 7:50 pm on 9/5/24 at the Beverly location in Chicago. My order was for a large sausage and cheese pizza and the 10 piece wing with bbq sauce on the side and blue cheese dressing. My bill came to about $46. Not a problem for me as I had a taste for Home Run Inn, one of Chicago’s favorite pizza spots (at least it was when I was growing up). When I went to pick up my pizza the young lady, I believe her name was Amari S, was very kind showing me my order and asking me how everything looked. I was ok with the look of my order and had no complaints even though it appeared that the pizza only had about 16 pieces of sausage on the entire pizza. When I got home and tried the wings they were basic and edible but really nothing to brag about. When I opened the pizza, everyone in the household grabbed a piece. As I picked up my piece, I noticed that the sauce was extremely skimpy to nonexistent, but I still gave it a try. When I finally bit into one of the family style cut slices, the pizza was beyond dry and I nearly went into a hypertensive coma from all of the salt (seasoning) on the pizza. I asked other household members and they also agreed that the pizza was mad salty. Whoever the cook was on that evening was clearly light on the sausage and sauce and HEAVY on the seasonings. Needless to say, no one else wanted any more (not even the dog) and it ended up in the trash. In this situation I changed my mind on where to order from due to me having the desire to have the HRI that I grew up on and loved. Unfortunately, the experience I got was not the experience that I desired. I was very disappointed and regret ordering from this establishment and will more than likely keep my future business with...

To Whom It May Concern,

I have been patronizing the Home Run Inn Pizza brand since I was a kid and have never had the service and food quality I and my family was given on this evening of December 1, 2023. We arrived at your establishment at 3PM and did not leave until 4:45PM. We ordered drinks, appetizer traditional wings and two large pizzas. The bar tender had to be found in order for our drinks to be prepared and was therefore served after about 20 to 25 minutes of waiting. Wings which were requested to be fried extra crispy came out even later and was not prepared as requested. The pizzas took even longer and when it finally arrived, only one pizza (1/2 cheese and 1/2 turkey sausage) came out Luke warm because it had been sitting under a light waiting for the second pizza which had to be corrected. The second pizza was supposed to be a sausage and pepperoni, but the chef had prepared a sausage only pizza. To rectify this, instead of notifying us of what was going on, they decided to chop up pepperoni pieces and lay them on top of the pizza and re-warm it. When this pizza arrived with this makeshift topping added to it, we were insulted and asked the waitress to notify management of this. Long of the short, after much complaint after management felt that $5 off was compensation enough for our experience, they decided to remove the horrible pizza they had served us in full. This experience has tarnished me and I do not ever plan to patronize Home Run Inn again even in purchasing your frozen pizzas. I just believe you should be aware of the staff choices and management’s views on customer service at this...