While Chicago’s hospitality scene today is both diverse and distinguished with a plethora of renowned restaurants all over the city, it is still hot dogs and Chicago-style pizza that the world usually associates with the Windy City.
When it comes to the latter, there are so many different varieties of pizza in Chicago with restaurants offering everything from deep-dish and tavern-style to the Neapolitan-style pizzas so often today found cooked at gourmet restaurants in wood-fired ovens.
There’s one spot in Chicago, however, that makes pizzas of such high quality that it has recently been named in a list of the best pizzerias on the planet.
Dubbed the most influential guide in the world of pizza, 50 Top Pizza last week announced its top 100 during an awards ceremony hosted at the Teatro di Corte in Palazzo Reale, in Naples.
It was Ravenswood’s Spacca Napoli Pizzeria which did Chicago proud making it onto the last of the 100 best pizzerias in the world at 93rd.
Describing itself as “a casual spot with Neapolitan-style thin-crust pizzas served in a rustic space with patio seating” Spacca Napoli Pizzeria is known for sourcing the majority of its ingredients from Italy and even, as the website reads, “bakes its pizzas in an oven built by third and fourth-generation artisans from Napoli”.
It’s this dedication to the Neapolitan way that Top 50 Pizza highlights in its praise of the pizzeria. Founded in 2006 by Jonathan Goldsmith and his wife Ginny Sykes, their background shines through the Spacca Napoli experience.
“Johnathan Goldsmith adores Naples and Neapolitan pizza and after having studied the secrets of the Neapolitan master pizza chefs by immersing himself in the city’s way of life, he has brought what he learned to Chicago”, Top 50 Pizza reads. “Here he offers to his guests not only pizza kneaded, topped, and baked to perfection, but also an authentic Italian experience supported by his business partner and life partner Ginny Sykes.”
Chicago was the only representative in the Midwest though pizzerias in New York, Portland, San Francisco, Phoenix, Miami, Tampa, Kenmore, and South Kingstown also made the list with New York being the most represented city in the United States with 5 honors.
Italy, of course, was responsible for 43 of the top pizzerias in the world, predominantly coming from Naples, Rome, Milan, and Caserta while Tokyo and London also had 4 pizzerias each make the list.
The top spot this year was a tie between 10 Diego Vitagliano Pizzeria in Naples, Italy, and I Masanielli – Francesco Martucci in Naples’ neighboring city of Caserta.
Having taken the top spot in the 2022 rankings New York’s Una Pizza Napoletana fell one spot down to second.
Now, who fancies a pizza?
Read the complete ranking of the 50 Top Pizza World 2023.[Featured image courtesy of Spacca Napoli Pizzeria]