At a recent Pizza Fest in Chicago, Jesse Harris, corporate executive chef of Giordano’s found his booth situated right next to Lee Wolen’s, Michelin-starred chef for Boka Restaurant Group.
“Even though we come from two very different types of concepts—Giordano’s is family-style casual and Boka has high-end restaurants—we speak a common language,” said Harris.
And that language is pizza.
The 63-unit Giordano’s is a Chicago icon known for its deep-dish, stuffed-crust pizzas, while at the Boka Group’s Alla Vita, Chef Wolen serves a multi-course Italian menu with artisan-style pizzas one of the featured categories. To create a pizza worthy of Giordano’s 50th anniversary, the two wanted to focus on the classic styles of Chicago pizza but bring in contemporary flavors and ingredients.
The Calabrian Sweet & Spicy Chicken Sausage Pizza is the result.
Building the flavor profile
Harris was thinking about “dipping his toe into hot honey,” an ingredient that’s been trending on pizzas. “I was talking with Lee [Wolen] and he said ‘this is how we make it at Alla Vita,’ so we decided to make our own,” said Harris.
Instead of purchasing a branded product, Harris grinds up Calabrian chilies, mixes them with honey and lets the mixture steep for three days. He then strains the honey and turns the infused chilies into chili jam.
“The honey is not as spicy as it would be with crushed red chilies,” he said. “The Calabrian chilies create a flavor that’s warm and slightly fruity rather than hot.”
To make the hot honey easy to execute across all 63 locations, Giordano’s commissary prepares it in bulk, packages the product and ships it out.
The giardiniera pickled vegetables add a textural element to the topping. This pizza is the Parmesan-crusted version.
The pizza is also topped with giardiniera, an Italian pickled vegetable condiment that Chicagoans love. Giordano’s already had a spicy giardiniera in house that’s used in other applications, but for this pizza, Harris and Wolen were looking for a milder, crunchier version that delivered more texture. So the new giardiniera was one of the SKUs Giordano’s brought in.
Italian sausage was the meat of choice from the beginning. At first the chefs tried a combo of pork sausage with chicken sausage, but that proved a little heavy, so they went with just chicken. “Instead of the homemade chicken sausage with cracked fennel that we usually use, this one is flavored with garlic and herbs,” said Harris.
The tomato sauce is Giordano’s longtime recipe and the cheese is a proprietary mozzarella that comes from southern Wisconsin. “The mozzarella has a big flavor profile of its own that differentiates our pizzas,” said Harris. It’s combined with a Parmesan-Romano blend for the pizza.
A pizza dressed in multiple styles
Although Chicago is well known for its deep-dish pizza, Giordano’s has developed its own stuffed-crust style. “Ours starts with a thin layer of dough and layered on top are cheese and other ingredients, then comes another layer of dough,” Harris explained. “Next we add the sauce, giardiniera, sausage and hot honey and everything bakes together and gets puffy.”
The tavern-style pizza has a thin crust and is typically cut into small pieces for service.
The Calabrian Sweet & Spicy Chicken Sausage Pizza is available in the Stuffed Deep-Dish style, as well as two other types of pies Giordano’s offers: Pan Pizza with Parmesan Crust and Tavern-Style Thin Crust. Prices range from $25-$40 for the deep dish, $20-$30 for tavern-style, and $18-$25 for the Parmesan-crusted pizza, depending on size.
The celebratory pizza was introduced systemwide on July 17 as a limited-time offer, but there’s a possibility it will remain on the menu, said Harris. “People love the flavor profile and we’ve had a very positive response,” he added.
As part of Giordano’s 50th Anniversary Celebration, the company is donating a portion of the proceeds from sales of the Calabrian Sweet & Spicy Chicken Sausage Pizza to Chicago’s Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital.