On a warm Thursday evening in September, Novel Pizza Cafe buzzed with upbeat energy, like an incarnate extension of the joyful shouts issuing from Harrison Park across the street. Teenagers clumped in little packs on the aluminum bleachers along the wall beneath a decorative scoreboard, housing single slices and sipping purple-stained ube iced lattes.
“Benny asked me to play kickball later,” one said.
At a nearby table two friends complained about work and blew on squares of pepperoni tavern pie. Customers still awaiting their pizza orders spilled outside onto the sidewalk. (Heads up: There’s no online or phone ordering here.) Some had walked their dogs over; many were dressed like they’d come straight from work or the gym.
At golden hour on this second-summer night in Pilsen, it felt as though this third place had anchored the corner of 19th and Wood Streets for decades, rather than just over three months. Of course, it helps that Novel’s excellent tavern- and pan-style pizzas leapfrog their often middling bar-food and tourist-trap categories, giving us pies as destination-worthy as they are comforting.
Before its brick-and-mortar debut in June, Novel’s three owners, cousins Francis Almeda and Ryan Catolico and their friend Enrique Huizar, popped up all over town to peddle their pizzas—at Nine Bar, Matters of the Heart Center, Side Practice and Drip Collective, the last two of which Almeda also owns.
Novel’s permanent menu features pizza by the slice, calzones and espresso drinks in addition to tavern and pan pizzas. (I wouldn’t mind a salad starter, though I don’t think that’s the sort of nourishment people are after when they come here.) A fine 12-inch pan-style pie sports a chewy, focaccia-like crust edged in lacy, caramelized cheese and heavy with melted mozzarella and premium toppings in the vein of Milly’s Pizza in the Pan. Think singed pepperoni with soft-piped ricotta, basil and hot honey. But what ultimately hooked me was the tavern pizza.
Starting with my custom corner triangle of the Filipino-inspired longanisa and giard tavern pie, I got a hit of jammy, tangy passata (damn, it burned the roof of my mouth!). The cornmeal-rubbed crust was crisp with a bit of stretch. It's sturdier than some of its Saltine-like cousins, which I appreciated when I reached the middle and found it still toothsome and free of oil ooze. The blistered cheese exhaled a woodsy aroma of dried oregano that highlighted the salty, oil-oozing giardiniera. Longanisa, a sweet breakfast-style sausage, is an ingenious substitute for Italian sausage crumbles. The caramelized-sugar notes lent a nice contrast to the other brackish toppings. We dusted Parmesan cheese on top from a little glass shaker, something I hadn’t done since I was a kid.
It’s been a little surreal to watch the ascendency of Chicago’s humble tavern (aka party cut) into a national icon—now starring regularly in splashy photo spreads in the New York Times and Bon Appetit; poorly replicated by the vulturous likes of Pizza Hut and more artfully rendered at Middle Brow Bungalow (honestly, how do they get that bubbly rendered crust so paper thin?) to delighted hordes every Tuesday night. For the longest time, tavern pizza was something we Chicagoans felt compelled to defend, to skeptical out-of-towners and fellow residents who’d long since snubbed it as shitty bar food.
“This is what real Chicagoans eat!” we’d cry from our barstool-shaped soapboxes. “And no, it’s not insane to cut it that way!”
We say this knowing that tavern style is and always has been bar food—initially doled out as square-shaped drinking food for blue-collar workers on their way home from a long shift, then later adopted as de facto party food for the smallest, and often fussiest, among us.
Tavern pizza is rarely objectively great; it’s more often mediocre to reliably solid. In most cases, this matters little because it offers nostalgic sustenance above all else, which means something different to every person. It might mean running around a suburban Giordano’s with the neighborhood kids—while the dads hold down the table over pitchers of beer—awaiting the arrival of the party-cut plain cheese, or feasting on crimp-edged Barnaby’s every Sunday night. When I moved to the city at age 22, I began associating “pizza” with the cracker thin crust and oozy middle of a John’s Pizzeria tavern pie, which we’d order at 1am because it was still open, knowing its cold, salty remains would save us the next morning. John’s would fondly remain my favorite until it unexpectedly closed last June.
Novel Pizza takes up this torch in a way that feels fresh though still steadfastly Chicagoan. Its casual environs are already a site for those deliciously mundane, weeknight memories. Its excellent pies are already shaping future evangelists who will one day clamor onto their own barstool-shaped pulpits to extol the singular delights of pizza pies eaten with knives and forks and impeccable thin crust, hacked into tiny squares.
The food: Excellent tavern pies (starting at $25) and pan pizzas (starting at $31.25) anchor a tight menu that features calzones, pizza by the slice and visiting, day-long pop-up menus every few weeks. During the evening rush, expect to wait around 30 minutes for tavern pizza and at least 45 for pan pizza. And come early—Novel’s known to sell out of everything.
The drink: Local roaster Four Letter Word supplies the coffee and Drip Collective curates the menu of drip coffee and espresso-based drinks that include flavor add-ons like ube and pandan vanilla. There’s also specialty agua fresca (think watermelon with matcha) and canned and bottled pop.
The vibe: This small but welcoming storefront is decked out in sports memorabilia, with a handful of four- and two-top tables, bleacher and counter seating.