- Michael Gebert
- Pie-Eyed Pizzerias owner Ian Muellner with the Monster
After mentioning (parenthetically) last week the lunchtime pizza buffet at Ricobene’s in Bridgeport, which can have a good dozen different types of pizza out at peak times, I got to wondering about other places that went above and beyond the standard pizza-slice paradigm as it existed almost universally in Chicago even half a dozen years ago; the boring choice of cheese, sausage, or pepperoni, all kept in a plexiglass pizza rewarmer till the cheese turned to Naugahyde. Thankfully, our slice scene has gotten better since then, with at least the most important thing—actually reheating the slice in the pizza oven, not keeping it in what was effectively a pizza dehydrator—becoming much more common. Anyway, a little Internet poking around brought me to Pie-Eyed Pizzeria in West Town, which I knew of (it was our readers’ pick for best pizza in Chicago in 2010) and had driven by at Chicago and Milwaukee many times, but never eaten at.
It’s a heck of a good slice to run across just sitting out waiting for you at lunchtime, but I was even more curious about another ingredient on the menu—cactus. How do you use cactus on a pizza, I asked Muellner? He brought out a jar of pickled cactus slices and said that, typically, it’s used on a pizza with pepperoni and jalapeño. There isn’t a big demand for it—maybe six or seven pizzas a week, ordered by a few regulars—but it’s enough to make it worth keeping a fresh jar in the fridge. Any of chance of getting a slice of it, I asked? “We don’t do it as slices at lunchtime,” he said. “Nobody would order it. Most people getting a slice, they want the classics.”
