You can take your lasagna and have it.

Exactly. It has everything I want: meat, cheese, and the bread all pre-packed for consumption.

Right, but it's not pizza.

I think GP means pizza. The 'bread' really confused me (I even commented on it) until I realised (and deleted) - that's not how I make my lasagnes!

Yeah, sorry. Common complaint about a Chicago deep dish is that it is a lasagna or bread bowl and not a pizza. Different strokes for different folks but on the scale of New York thin crust to Chicago deep dish, I will veer towards the more hearty option every time.

I'm even more confused now, I thought the lasagne up-thread referred to ...lasagne, the pasta dish, but people call US/Chicago style deep pan pizza 'lasagne' too? I've never had one, maybe that would make more sense if I did!

Fans of the deep dish style call it pizza. It is the critics who will refer to it as a lasagna in a derogatory sense (eg "It's not real pizza"). Here is an infamous clip of Jon Stewart liking it to a casserole[0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCgYMFtxUUw

I was mocking Chicago style deep dish "pizza". My favorite American style is New Haven style.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven-style_pizza

People love to be riled up. It's clearly pizza but folks just love to argue.

Most Chicagoans I know do not eat deep dish often, nor do they even really like it. But...as someone else said, this isn't really the alternative. The crust is just plain wrong.

Yep. Of the several native chicago friends in my extended friend circle, all but one has a strong preference for the tavern square cut style

Tavern pizza is pretty common throughout Chicagoland—most non chains specialize in it. But it’s not always cracker thin.

To be fair, an awful lot of upper-middle class esp. North Side Chicagoans aren't from Chicago. The inner suburbs are far more Chicago than a lot of neighborhoods in the city that are filled with various Midwestern emigrants (who didn't think they were good enough for NY, and didn't think they were good looking enough for California, so ended up in the second city.) The inner suburbs are filled with the descendants of white flight from the 50s-70s, who had been in the city for generations when most of its cultural touchstones were established.

I'm from Chicago and I like deep dish, but these big thin slices are also good. It's obvious what the default is: when I was a kid "pizza" meant Giordano's or Eduardo's or Lou Malnati's or The Medici, or Unos or Dues, etc. Thin crust was called "thin crust." This article uses the same convention.

edit: I think there was an exception for Reggio's. Maybe we thought of it as "pizza" because it's so dense and advertised as a "butter crust."

> Midwestern emigrants (who didn't think they were good enough for NY, and didn't think they were good looking enough for California, so ended up in the second city.)

Or because it's close to home and way more affordable? Also, while winter sucks, I'll take a Chicago summer over both those places every single year.

I grew up here as well. No one thinks deep dish immediately when talking about getting pizza. It feels more like a once or twice a year delicacy than anyone's go-to pizza.

Proper tavern-style pizza is cut into squares, not slices. Slices are for tourists.

I prefer the thin crust style as well. If I wanted tomato soup, I'd have ordered that, not pizza!