Pizza Club Chicago’s 63rd meeting had a lot riding on it. Acclaimed Roman pizza dude Gabriele Bonci’s debut in America, right here in Chicago, so the hype was definitely there.

To be fair to Bonci, PCC is used to a more classic Chicago/American approach to pizza with some degree of crust, gooey cheese and sauce. Bonci is not that style of pizza.  Nick Kindelsperger from the Tribune absolutely loves the crust, and says Bonci is “serves pizza al taglio, a Roman specialty that translates as pizza by the cut”. They cut off as much as you want of any pizza with scissors–pretty cool so you can sample a bunch. Toppings range from sauceless potato and rosemary to mortadella to sardine and mozz to almost anything savory and delicious on a pizza you can think of. All of it very high quality, and the focaccia type crust is great.

Meant more as a carry out place (what these types of spots typically are in Rome) there isn’t much room to eat there which doesn’t help the atmosphere. It is, however a really nice place and it’s definitely interesting to see the whole operation in progress as its all out in the open.

It you are a pizza fan to any degree, Bonci is definitely something you should check out.

6/22/17

# of people in attendance: 5

# pizzas sampled: way too many to remember

pizzas: lots of crazy shit

SCORES

atmosphere: 3.5

sauce: 4.8

cheese: 5

toppings: 7.2

crust: 5.8

price: 3.8

overall score: 5