{"id":13667,"date":"2025-06-25T14:02:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T14:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/13667\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T14:02:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T14:02:12","slug":"great-lake-and-its-pizza-is-back-idiosyncratic-as-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/13667\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Lake, and its pizza, is back, idiosyncratic as ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Great Lake, the legendary (and legendarily iconoclastic) pizza joint that fixated (and sometimes frustrated) Andersonville for five years, has returned, a dozen years later.<\/p>\n

Last week, in true Great Lake fashion, it opened very quietly on Berwyn Avenue, two blocks from its original home on Balmoral Avenue. Already, it\u2019s remarkable: It opened without an online footprint, blip of social media, publicity campaign to herald its return, or much of a storefront sign to direct you. Lydia Esparza, who co-founded Great Lake with husband Nick Lessins, told me she was still trying to figure out what Reddit meant.<\/p>\n

\"TwoTwo whole pizzas seen on a shelf at Great Lake business on June 24, 2025. (Antonio Perez\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

When I visited on a late afternoon, she looked at me and laughed:<\/p>\n

I was the fifth customer of the day.<\/p>\n

Forty-eight hours later, on a weekday morning, an excited neighbor in a Chicago cap, from down the street, poked his head in and asked: Was it really true? Were they back? He asked because he was the only one there at 10 a.m. and the vibes this time were \u2026<\/p>\n

Relaxed?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a big difference from those days of long queues down Balmoral, the national spotlight (GQ, Food & Wine, New York Times, etc.) that said Great Lake made the best pizza in America, the block-long lines during a one-day pop-up<\/a> at Cellar Door Provisions in 2019, that crush of fans suggesting Great Lake had not faded from memories. Anyone who went to Great Lake, which lasted from 2008 to 2013, can recall a story: Three-hour waits for pizzas, life-changing pizzas, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Jay-Z and Beyonce (the couple waiting hours). My favorite was the time they refused to sell a pizza to one of Oprah\u2019s assistants \u2014 such a pie would surely go cold between Andersonville and the West Loop. Great Lake was a viral smash before there was a new TikTok viral smash every hour.<\/p>\n

But right now, it\u2019s quiet, and to some extent, I think, that\u2019s the way they like it.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re still figuring out what they want to be this time around, and they\u2019re doing it very casually. Hours \u2014 most likely 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday \u2014 are still in flux. Even the menu seems decidedly loose, prone to whim \u2014 some days they\u2019ve been making open-faced sandwiches using Lessins\u2019 moist rectangular bricks of Nordic rye and porridge bread; and most days they\u2019re doing a couple types of pizza \u2014 no additions, no substitutes. (You\u2019ll have to phone to hear what they have.)<\/p>\n

The idea, like the old Great Lake, is to allow whatever they find at a farmers market that morning to dictate the menu that day. Still, know this: Lessins does not want Great Lake to be considered \u201ca restaurant.\u201d Or \u201ca pizza place.\u201d That\u2019s why it\u2019s not Great Lake Pizza.<\/p>\n

\"OwnerOwner Lydia Esparza places some of the grocery items on a shelf at Great Lake business in Chicago\u2019s Anderson neighborhood on June 24, 2025. (Antonio Perez\/Chicago Tribune)
\n\"OwnerOwner Lydia Esparza places the only signage they have on the window ledge at Great Lake in Chicago\u2019s Anderson neighborhood on June 24, 2025. (Antonio Perez\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe \u2018food shop\/grocery,\u2019\u201d Esparza said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, or \u2018bakery\/grocery,\u2019\u201d Lessins said. \u201cOne that happens to have a kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you remember the old Great Lake, none of this will be surprising. The quality of the food \u2014 and I\u2019ve tried a few things \u2014 is still predictably next-level: That Nordic rye is as chewy as it is beige, and a sandwich of English peas, Persian cucumbers and goat cheese from Zingerman\u2019s in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was as refreshing as lemonade. But what\u2019s nicest about this return is how Esparza and Lessins, both 60, both Gen X, both alienating, mildly combative and majorly principled, have not bent to convention. There will be no pizza delivery. There will be no Uber Eats, no DoorDash. OK, they plan to make a website, maybe even open an Instagram account. Probably they\u2019ll get a sign for the front window that, unlike the current sign, is larger than a children\u2019s shoebox.<\/p>\n

But they will continue to do things their way.<\/p>\n

They want you to come in and order from them, face to face. This is personal, Esparza said: \u201cWe want to be here a very long time, 20 years this time, when we\u2019re in our 80s.\u201d Indeed, so far, most of their customers have been old customers who are delighted and can\u2019t believe they\u2019re back. Particularly because the last time ended so badly: After five years, they had major problems with their lease, and a reputation as being too difficult to just order pizza from. They flirted with relocating Great Lake to their native Detroit (and moved back to Michigan for a short time), then they landed a city grant from Chicago to restart here. They signed a 10-year lease on this storefront a block off of Clark Street.<\/p>\n

One thing they learned between installments of Great Lake was to value their time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThough this isn\u2019t office work, we decided to keep it a day job,\u201d Lessins said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thinking mental health, how it\u2019s important to eat earlier,\u201d Esparza said.<\/p>\n

\"OwnerOwner Nick Lessins prepares a pizza at Great Lake on June 24, 2025. (Antonio Perez\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

There are three tables and six chairs. They are planning to make more food (including pizza) throughout the day, and leave it out on the counter, ready to be taken. They are selling their breads and granolas, but also ice cream from Zingerman\u2019s, white corn and beans from California, Japanese rice from New York. Esparza makes a great olive oil chocolate tea cake.<\/p>\n

The look of the place is entirely by Esparza, who designed and set out its terrazzo floor \u2014 she is a veteran of Herman Miller\u2019s west Michigan headquarters. Esparza even has a name for the warm, minimalistic airiness \u2014 \u201cgramma modern.\u201d<\/p>\n

The goal this time, Lessins said, is to \u201cjust let the food speak for itself, and if that means we\u2019re less predictable than some people would like, well, then we\u2019re less predictable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being idiosyncratic, after all, is not arrogance.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything we do \u2014 the way we operate, the small businesses we want to support on our shelves, just encouraging you to vote with your dollar \u2014 is because we give a (expletive),\u201d Esparza said. \u201cTo be honest, you could say we give (expletive) too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

As if on cue, the door opened, a man looked around, befuddled:<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this Great Lake? The pizza place?\u201d<\/p>\n

Good question.<\/p>\n

Great Lake, 1476 W. Berwyn Ave., 773-656-1476<\/p>\n

Originally Published: June 25, 2025 at 8:43 AM CDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Great Lake, the legendary (and legendarily iconoclastic) pizza joint that fixated (and sometimes frustrated) Andersonville for five years,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,2105,5386,1818,1370,988,1072],"class_list":{"0":"post-13667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-food-and-drink","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-restaurants","14":"tag-things-to-do"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114744376944428806","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}