Under. The. Sauce.

Look, I try to be a forgiving person, but...

Native Chicagoan here. Something that always gets glossed over is understanding that there's two types of deep dish pizza: stuffed (what you see here) and pan.

Stuffed pizza (from bottom to top) is dough, cheese (plus vegetables or meat or whatever else you wanna "stuff" it with), another layer of dough, then the sauce on top.

Giordano's or Gino's East is most closely associated with stuffed, even though it's often only referred to as "deep dish."

Pan pizza is almost the same in shape/dimensions, but instead of it being stuffed with cheese/vegetables/meat, that part is just bread.

Lou Malnati's is most closely associated with pan pizza, even though it's often only referred to as "deep dish."

The differences are incredibly important, and anyone who's tried both can concur.

Anyways, they both have cheese so idk what this dude talking about lol

Thanks for comin to my TED Talk.

There is cheese, but when I want pizza, I don't want a salami casserole

I don't care if it's under the sauce I still think deep dish pizza is stupid

Does it have bread, cheese, and sauce? Then I'm going to love eating it, don't really care what you call it

That's not pizza. 

Jon Stewart has some thoughts about this.

My one and only encounter with chicago pizza was enough to convince me I hated it. Doesn't mean it's bad though, just definitely not for me. I think it would be better called a casserole than a pizza.

I'm a relatively recent transplant to Chigacoland so I feel a bit of an instinctive need to defend deep dish. But really, its more of a love for all forms of pizza.

New York style? Hell yes Chicago style? Two slices and long nap, but still hell yes Detroit style, tavern style, California style, thin crust, thick crust, stuffed crust? Yes yes yes yes yes and yes!

I feel like it’s important to me to learn whether the sauce is actually good. I’m terrified that it’s bland. It looks bland. I cannot see any spices or herbs. This is stressing me out more than it should.

It's amazing how pizza was perfected somewhere between 100 and 200 years ago and then every city in America has decided they need to make it worse in innovative and unique ways.

I like my pizza like I like my coffee, with no cheese.

The nature of deep dish pizza aside, doesn't cheeseless pizza predate the kind with cheese anyway?

This hurts me as an italian

Did you forget?

Chicago Style is utter garbage "pizza". If I wanted a mess drenched in pasta and sauce, I'd get a lasagna. I once ordered a deep dish pizza at a bar, and like a civillized sensible human, I assumed it would be that crispy-crusted glory that is Detroit Style deep dish pizza. Not so, it was the vomit-inducing deep Chicago, which looks and tastes the exact same going in as it does coming out.

Detroit >> Chicago, it's not even close. I will fight and die on that hill, as you can actually make a hill out of Detroit style slices! You can only make shitty Agincourt mud out of Chicago-style slop.

It's under the sauce