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Review Thu Mar 20 2008
Guest Review: Great Lake
Transmission Editor Anne Holub submitted this review of Andersonville's new Great Lake Pizzeria.
Last night, I had the good fortune of enjoying an amazing meal at one of the newest pizza joints to open up in Andersonville, called Great Lake. The little storefront shop, which offers carry-out or dine-in at their single eight-person table, is just off Clark on Balmoral, and is in real danger of being my new favorite neighborhood haunt. It's a simple restaurant, making a thin crusted, quality ingredient driven, lovingly baked pizza that's a wonderful addition to Chicago's growing roster of pizza masters.
The shop, which sells a few dozen gourmet dry goods, teas, coffees (along with a few locally made screen-printed cards), features just four pizzas on its menu — but oh, you hardly need more than that. Last night, I opted to sit at their extremely welcoming table with a couple of friends while we BYOB-ed a bottle of wine and made acquaintances with my new favorite Italian meat, sopressata. This pizza (#2 on their menu) included the delightfully complex sopressata, fresh mozzarella, olive oil and imported sea salt, along with a fresh tomato puree from a farm in Wisconsin. Our second selection, pizza #4 on the menu, included smoked bacon from Kentucky (infused with a rich smokey flavor that I could feel across my whole mouth with every bite) crème fraiche, onion and fresh sage, along with a generous grind of tellicherry black pepper.
The pizzas we opted to wait to try (not for lack of salivating, but merely for lack of room in our stomachs) include a tantalizingly simple combination of tomato puree, fresh mozzarella and marjoram (pizza #1) and pizza #3, which features cremini mushrooms and wine-cured goat cheese. Believe you me, I will eat these pizzas someday soon, and they will be delicious.
Great Lake pizza is open from 3pm to 9pm Wed-Fri, 1pm to 9pm Sat, and 1pm to 7pm Sun. You can call in your order to 773-334-9270 or stop in at 1477 W. Balmoral Ave.
