Dish of the Week: Deep Dish Pizza from Windy City Pizza in Virginia Beach

We’ve all heard of wine and food pairings, but what about movie and food pairings? Certain foods pair perfectly with the right movie. For example, I can’t watch The Goonies without slipping into the kitchen for a spoon and a quart of ice cream. Rocky Road anyone?

Going to the movies to see Bruce Willis’ newest movie, Death Wish, left me craving pizza—but not just any pizza. The film, set in Chicago, had three or four scenes with the characters eating the city’s famous deep dish pizza.

My friend and I planned on getting dinner at a local restaurant, but as we browsed the menu, we couldn’t stop thinking of the Chicago-style pizza that we saw on the big screen. We booked it and headed down General Booth Blvd to Windy City Pizza.

When you walk into Windy City, you’re nearly transported to Chicago. The walls are filled with Chicago-sports memorabilia and pictures of the city skyline. Windy City sets itself apart from other pizza joints by serving authentic deep-dish pizza.

Windy City easily succeeds in serving Coastal Virginia a taste of Chicago. We ordered a deep dish pie with peperoni and patiently waited the noted 45 minutes. Let me tell you, it’s worth the wait.

Chicago-style pizza properly fits the moniker, “pizza pie.” The flaky crust builds a wall to keep a pound-and-a-half of mozzarella inside. Prepared differently than New York-style pizza, real Chicago-style deep dish has the sauce on top. Deep dish pizza takes longer to cook in the oven, so if the cheese was on top, it would burn leaving a less desirable dish.

Windy City’s deep dish is 12 inches in diameter, creating eight slices. The filling pizza, topped with thick slices of peperoni, had us stuffed after two-and-a-half slices each. My mouth watered with each bite of the chunky tomato sauce and melted, gooey cheese. To paraphrase Adam Richman, in the battle of Man vs. Food, food certainly won.