3821 Riverside Dr
Burbank
818-641-5900
There are certain things about a Chicago style deep dish pizza that I love. The chucky tomato sauce, the layers of cheese and toppings, and a nice flakey, usually with cornmeal, crust. There are places in LA like Masa of Echo Park and Hollywood Pies that serves up a very good example of Chicago deep dish pizza.
Then there are places like Numero Uno Pizza, that think a deep dish pizza means doughly crust baked in a pan. That describes Prizzi's. I heard some good things about Prizzi's but never tried their location on Franklin in LA. Then they closed that location. Then, I heard they moved to Burbank, so I decided to give them a try.
Deep dish sausage pizza-$19. This reminded me of pizza places like Numero Uno Pizza, where they bake a pizza in a deep dish pan and call it Chicago deep dish pizza, but in reality it's nothing close to deep dish Chicago pizza. This was just a large amount of doughy crust, a little sauce then the ground up sausage, and then cheese. It was better than Numero Uno Pizza, but it wasn't a true deep dish Chicago pizza. I wasn't impressed with the sausage, because it was like ground sausage, not in the chunky pieces or the flat layer of sausage you see. The texture and taste was just wrong.
Deep dish meat lovers pizza-sausage, pepperoni, and ground beef, $25. The first thing I noticed about this pizza was the sausage. It was so thin. If you had true Chicago deep dish pizza before, you know the sausage has chunky pieces of tomato. It isn't a thin smooth layer.
This was a little better than the sausage, but the crust wasn't that good, a bit doughly. The cheese and toppings were OK, but nothing really stood out. Nor did this come close to Chicago deep dish pizza.
Since I have had deep dish pizza before, I know they take awhile to bake. The servers should tell people about the wait. Our server did not and that could be a problem for people who don't know about Chicago deep dish pizza.
I paid the server and told her it's all your's. A few minutes later the server came and asked, "Do I need change?" Now, WTF is that, I already told you "it's all your's" and even if you didn't understand, you come back with change and not empty handed.
Otherwise, service was pretty good.
To call Prizzi's a true Chicago deep dish pizza place, would be a mistake. I saw some of their other items, salads, sandwiches, pasta etc and they did look pretty good. I may go to try the other items, but I won't go back for the pizza.
