about us
Our unique pizza in the pan is one of kind. Our family recipes have been used for decades and you can taste the difference in our special tomato sauce. The sauce is flavored with a secret recipe of herbs and spices to give our pizza its special flavor and we use only vine-ripened San Marzano tomatoes.
Our deep dish and thin crust pizzas are popular with our regulars. Each gets its own blend of up to four artisanal Wisconsin cheeses including the best locally made mozzarella in the midwest.
My Pi is a family-owned business. My father’s hobby is cooking and he studied cooking his whole life. In the early 1950s, he started developing his recipe for deep dish pizza. He continued to work on this recipe while at Northwestern’s Business School. To pay his way through school, he opened a hot dog stand on the Northside. He also worked as a steward at his fraternity.
No fraternity has ever eaten so well because he had carte blanche to work on all of his recipes, from pizza to filet mignon. My dad based his pizza recipe on improving his favorite pizza. He studied and experimented with tomatoes that were not as acidic and he developed a “spice pack” that would enhance the flavor of the tomatoes on his pizza.
After college, he worked his way up the corporate ladder until he became a partner in a large financial brokerage company, all the while entertaining his family and friends and repeatedly hearing, “You should open your own pizzeria.” So, on August 24, 1971, my father opened the first My Pi on Sheridan Road across from Loyola University in Rogers Park.
He started with the deep dish pizza recipe that he had been perfecting since the 1950s. His commitment to serving pizzas made out of the finest ingredients was an immediate success.
Throughout the years, he opened more than twenty My Pi restaurants in 9 states. My Pi was the first Chicago deep dish pizza restaurant opened outside of Illinois and has been saluted as the best pizza in the towns where it was located. When I was fourteen, my father opened a small carryout version of his restaurant in our home. I started cooking there and continued to work at his restaurants for eight years. Then I moved onto restaurant management school and the Culinary Institute of America.
I spent the next ten years working as a chef in fine dining restaurants around Chicago until I decided to recreate the restaurant I grew up in serving my father’s pizza. I hope you enjoy eating our food as much as we enjoy preparing it for you!
June 07, 2019
Listen to Rich talk to Steve Dolinsky on the Pizza City USA podcast
Rich talks about how they were the first deep-dish outside of Illinois, then shrank back to just one location. His father’s meticulousness – he was a 3rd generation baker – led to all sorts of tweaks on the original Uno’s recipe.
February 06, 2019
Jeremy Melendez of Guiltyeats.com picks My Pi as his #1 deep dish pizza in Chicago
September 05, 2018
Michael Gebert interviews Steve Dolinsky at My Pi about his new book, Pizza City USA, 101 Reasons Why Chicago Is America's Greatest Pizza Town.
June 20, 2018
USA Today includes My Pi in it's list of Prime Pizza Places in Chicago. View their gallery.
February 22, 2017
THE BEST CHICAGO DEEP-DISH PIZZA PLACES by Thrillist
Deep dish at My Pi is truly all-American, with ingredients that are said to be superior to Italy's. All the cheese comes from Wisconsin, and the San Marzano vine-ripened tomatoes are grown in California. These tomatoes are the reason My Pi is known for its famous chunky sauce -- it's much more sweet than acidic and seasoned with a special blend of herbs and spices. But what makes this pizza really stand out is the crust: It's raised three times and the final proofing happens in the oven, so you're in for a tender, yeasty bite.
November 30, 2016
You Voted On The Best Pizza In Chicago, & The Winner Is... By Chicagoist
The winner of Chicagoist's 2016 best pizza bracket is: My Pi, which defeated Apart Pizza Company 53 percent to 47 percent with about 18,000 votes cast.
There have been My Pi locations in Chicago since the early '70s, but the current location is at 2010 North Damen Street. At one point, the concept was franchised all over the nation, but right now, the only My Pi is here in Chicago.
March 18, 2015
Top 10 Pizza Places in Chicago By Chicago's Best
Let’s get deep for a minute. The pies at My Pie pack a punch. Soggy crust? Fuggetaboutit. The sauce? So secret, Richard Aronson doesn’t even know what his dad (who opened the joint in 1971) puts in it. Order a whole pie or grab it by the slice to become a fan favorite with your friends. Location: 2010 N Damen Ave. in Bucktown.What's this item about? What makes it interesting? Write a catchy description to grab your audience's attention...