Stop #10 Gino's East

Gino’s East

2801 N. Lincoln Ave.

Chicago, IL 60657

Sadly, Gino’s East was the last stop on the Chicago Pizza Challenge, but we ended with some true-to-form Chicago-style deep dish. Gino’s started off really well, but unfortunately for them, their ratings fell as the meal went on. I’ll start off with the good stuff. We visited Gino’s Lincoln Park location at Diversey, Lincoln & Racine. This is a very small location, but has great atmosphere and a real “pizza joint” feel. Mary wasn’t a big fan of the plastic silverware, which really didn’t stand up to their hearty deep dish crust. Needless to say, getting a table for 7 on a Sunday evening was no easy feat for the Gino’s staff, but they did it and were very apologetic for our wait (which was only about 20 minutes). Once we were seated our drinks were served almost immediately; regrettably, things went downhill from here. The pizza was not really the culprit of this, but I do believe the remainder of our experience affected our scores. Once our pizza came, our waitress did not return to our table until (on about the fourth try) Mary was able to flag her down for some water. In response, Mary said “the waitress gets D- for making us dehydrated in this 90-degree restaurant!” When she returned with Mary’s water the rest of us had opportunity to ask for more water -- she cluelessly proceeded to refill the rest of our waters. That was only made worse by the fact that it was about 90-degrees in the place. In defense of Gino’s, the heat may have been due to circumstances out of their control, because it wasn’t that hot when we got there. But still, it’s too bad, because it magnified the poor service and thirst.

Service: 1.5

Atmosphere: 2.08

Value: 3.00

(These are some of the lowest scores we gave in this category)

I’ve never mentioned our little sub-challenge in which Mitch guesses the bill every time. He was right on the first stop, so we continued the game for the rest of the challenge -- and he was usually pretty close! His guess was right on the money this time too! “It ended how it started,” he said.

Now onto the pizza, which under normal circumstances, is probably pretty good. We ordered the following:

1 Deep Dish Pepperoni

1 Deep Dish Spinach

1 Deep Dish Supreme

1 Thin Barbecue Chicken

1 Antipasto Salad (this was our guest, Meg’s, order)

I think everyone enjoyed their preferred pizza on Sunday. I, personally, enjoyed the deep dish spinach -- it was very good and I liked the sauce! The barbecue chicken was also a hit among the female contingent. The supreme pizza was enjoyed as well -- they were very generous with toppings and cheese. Meg, our guest, is not big on deep dish pizza (give her a break, she’s from Kentucky) ordered a salad and gave it an average score of 4. Here’s how the pizza stacked up:

Crust: 2.83

Sauce: 3.33

Cheese: 3.42

Toppings: 3.17

Overall Quality: 3.08

Overall Taste: 3.00

Average: 2.82/5

I honestly think that had we come to Gino’s on a different night with a different waitress, it would have finished a little better than second to last (#9). Although we weren’t able to close the challenge on high note in terms of experience, Meg summed the whole thing up with her take on the night, “great food & great company!” I agree.

We’ll definitely miss the pizza challenge, but I will sum it all up for you in a subsequent post. I’ll list our top 10 and provide some additional commentary for some of our favorites.