Stop #7 Vito & Nick's

Vito & Nick’s

8433 South Pulaski

Chicago, IL

We visited Vito & Nick’s on Sunday evening and it was a hit with our group! Coming in at #3 so far, the lone South Side pizzeria on our list fared pretty well. Vito & Nick’s is known for its paper thin, thin crust pizza. This pizza place brought us back to our childhoods -- the only thing missing, according to Dan, was a little league baseball team. It’s true, Vito & Nick’s does not present a lot of glamour, but it does remind a child of the 80sof the pizza parties we frequented as kids. The pizza -- not to mention the prices-- reminded me of that as well. It was good, but I think these high scores were more from some kind of nostalgia effect rather than actual fabulous pizza. Reflecting back on our experience on the long drive home, we came to the conclusion that Vito & Nick’s pizza tasted really good, but we did not leave convinced we couldn’t find thin crust pizza as good (or similar in style) elsewhere. On that note, for all you City dwellers: Vito & Nick’s is not easily accessible, although Noelle enjoyed her experience so much she said “I’ll bus it here!”. (Long bus ride too.) Overall, we enjoyed our experience at Vito & Nick’s and as Elizabeth said, “$1 Old Style Light drafts. There’s no need to say anything more.”

Since it was thin crust, we ordered a lot of pizza:

1 House Special (Sausage, onion, mushroom & green pepper) -- we also added pepperoni to 1/2 of this one

1 Pepperoni

1 Cheese

1 Pepperoni, olives and giardiniera

1 Tomato, basil and garlic (Margherita)

They were all pretty delicious and we ate almost all of it! I’m not going to review each pizza since we ordered so many and we ordered pretty traditional toppings. The toppings were good; I didn’t feel we were shorted on anything and they were high in quality. The crowd favorite was probably the House Special or the Margherita -- both completely gone.

Here are the scores for Vito & Nick’s:

Service: 4.13

-- Our waitress was great, and there was a mix up in the kitchen that equalled free french fries for our table! (Gotta love it when you get free food!)

Atmosphere: 3.56

Value: 4.94

-- This was by far the cheapest place we’ve been. Maybe leaving the north side more often would be easier on our wallets ...

Crust: 4.50

Sauce: 3.81

Toppings: 3.94

Cheese: 3.25

Overall Quality: 3.94

Overall Taste: 4.00

Average Score: 4.01/5.0

Guy Fieri of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives (http://www.foodnetwork.com/diners-drive-ins-anddives/index.html) went to Vito & Nick’s, so we had to try it. We don’t regret it. It wasn’t the most unique thin crust pizza you could find (that award still goes to Bricks), but it brought many of us, Mary specifically, “back to [our] days in STL.” It’s not your typical Chicago-style pizza -- but in many of our opinions, it was “the best of both worlds.” With Kevin having said that, he was obviously referring the cheap beer and the delicious thin crust pizza. For others, especially those of us who have to leave this fabulous City soon [Mitch and I :( ], it was awesome thin crust pizza in Chicago (with great friends).