Edwardo's Natural Pizza: No Longer Great, But Still Very Good
Daniel Zemans, our man in Chicago, checks in with another piece of intel on the Windy City pizza scene. Daniel also blogs about Chicagoland pizza with his friends on the Chicago Pizza Club blog. —The Mgmt.
Edwardo’s Natural Pizza Restaurant
1321 East 57th Street, Chicago IL 60637 (map); 773-241-7960; 8 other locations
Getting There: Metra to 57th Street or 6 Jackson Park Express bus to 57th Street and Stony Island, walk 1/2 mile west
Pizza Style: Stuffed and thin-crust available; known for stuffed
Oven Type: Gas
The Skinny: One of the oldest stuffed pizzerias; still good but, other than the crust, has declined in recent years
Price: $20.72 for a medium pizza with one topping
In my review of Bacino’s, I mentioned that the owner of that establishment got his start in the pizza business after entering into a relationship with the owners of Giordano's (review here). That relationship didn’t work out, and Dan Bacin opened Bacino’s in 1978 using an Italianized version of his name. It so happens that there is a second pizzeria that has a similar history.
Edward Jacobson split from the Broglio brothers (then the owners of Giordano's) and went out on his own in 1978. There was no way to Italianize Jacobson, so he added an o to the end of his first name and opened the first Edwardo's Natural Pizza Restaurant on the far northern border of Chicago in Rogers Park. A year later, he opened his second location, this time on the south side in Hyde Park.
Edwardo's sought to carve out a niche as the healthier version of stuffed pizza. They pushed (and may well have invented) a spinach-soufflé-stuffed pizza, which was full of finely chopped fresh spinach. Hydroponic basil and oregano was grown in each restaurant and they used it on the pizza and sold it separately to people who wanted to take home some fresh herbs. Edwardo's tried out a whole-wheat crust as early as 1981. A concern with quality was also evident in the restaurant's use of San Marzano tomatoes in the sauce.
