Pau Gasol got it all wrong about ‘Chicago-style pizza’

Pau Gasol chose to come to the Chicago in the summer of 2014 because the city’s diverse culture appealed to him. He turned down more money from other franchises. He turned down more palatable offers from potentially better teams – though it could be argued that a healthy, well-coached and engaged Bulls squad was as good as any championship contender heading into 2014-15.

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He wanted to come to Chicago, and considering the caliber of person Pau is, even the Greatest City in the World (admittedly, this Chicago native is biased), this is something the city should be proud of. Another star in that gorgeous flag.

A year and a half in, though, it appears that Gasol is not as big a fan of something that far, far too many people think is a Chicago staple. “Chicago-style” pizza, ugh.

From a fantastic talk with the great Alex Wong at GQ:

What about Chicago-style deep dish pizza?
I’ve tried it. I’m not a fan of this deep dish pizza. To me, it’s just a cake of melted cheese. I like the thin-crusted pizzas better.

OK, we’re back to offer a few notes after walking around the block for a bit, yelling at squirrels, cursing the gods, channeling Studs and Dahl and Bun E. and the whole lot of them.

First off? Deep dish pizza is delicious. If someone offered you “a cake of melted cheese” that could also be filled with varying types of sausage and, perhaps, a bit of spinach, would you turn it down? Bring to me all of the cheese-cakes in question. Not the sweet ones. The other ones, with a giant patty of sausage that lines the entire thing. The one I can cover in dried red pepper flake.

Now that this is established, we need to re-iterate something that Kyle Kinane so perfectly put in a set of his a few years back (one we cannot embed due to its NSFW-but-seriously-if-you-haven’t-heard-this-bit-click-on-this-link nature).

Nobody in Chicago eats “Chicago-style pizza.” I grew up in the city and then the suburbs, and the second time I remember eating it was when my family had to make a dinner stop on a road trip at a “Chicago-style” restaurant chain in Indianapolis. “Chicago-style pizza,” as Kinane mentioned, is something you do after your uncle and cousin visit you from St. Louis and they treat you to your first trip to Navy Pier for a Ferris Wheel ride when you’re 23. This is literally a thing that happened to me.

Somebody, before Pau opts out of his contract this summer, needs to drag the big man out to a real Chicago-style pizza place. Where the crust is thin, the sausage is Italian, and the fennel is flowing. Where they give you an RC Cola one-liter bottle with every delivery purchase. Where the menu, for some reason, still offers fried calamari and baked ziti. Where you a be sure that, in a kitchen that still somehow makes something called a “pizza puff,” the only authentic thing in the whole damn place is a thin-crust, square-sliced, CHICAGO-STYLE PIZZA.

Dibs on the corner piece.

As someone whose parents refused to order chain pizza until I had too many Book It! coupons to ignore, I feel as if I’m qualified to act as the expert, here. The heartburn-riddled, “yeah, let’s do mushrooms and black olives on it this time, too”-expert. I have an uncle that had to move out of Chicago and into southern Illinois, and he once got into a angry war of words over the lack of good square-cut pizza options down there with a Malkovich. The actual father that created John Malkovich. This is how seriously we take these sorts of things.

I will defend the bucket of cheese that will, sadly, forever remain my city’s represent entry into every pizza competition. It is delicious and, hilariously, it will still anger and endless series of dumb dads when they hit up a “Chicago-style” pizza chain restaurant with the wife and the whole gang, expecting the pie to come out in 30 minutes of less so as to avoid The Noid. Those dads deserve to wait for an extra 30 minutes, although the server certainly doesn’t deserve that 15 percent tip they’ll get.

Chicago-style pizza comes flat, it comes crisp, you don’t fold it and you have to unwrap it from a sweltering, steaming, paper cover.

Someone let Pau know. We want him to opt in, so to speak.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops