Bacino's: Chicago's Healthy (?) Stuffed Pizza
Daniel Zemans, our man in Chicago, checks in with another piece of intel on the Windy City pizza scene. Daniel also blogs about Chicagoland pizza with his friends on the Chicago Pizza Club blog. —The Mgmt.
Bacino's has been selling stuffed pizzas since 1978, making it one of the oldest purveyors of the Chicago delicacy. The founder, Dan Bacin, had a background in business, not cooking. No marketing dummy, Bacin used a variation of an old Chicago political trick in naming his restaurant. There is no truth to the rumor that Barack Obama's last name used to be Bama before he ran for office in Chicago, but many political candidates have changed their names to appeal to the significantly Irish electorate. While it would make no sense to name a pizzeria O'Bacin's, adding an o to the end of his name gave Bacin's pizzeria some faux Italian authenticity.
I don't know the full story behind the founding of Bacino's, but it involves Giordano's (reviewed for Slice here), Chicago's most popular stuffed pizza chain. Not long after Giordano's was formed in the mid '70s, the company was looking to grow. Dan Bacin got involved with them but ended up going out on his own and starting Bacino's. I'm unclear as to the time frame and whether Bacin ever actually opened a Giordano's, but a search of the relevant page on the State of Illinois website shows that on September 11, 1980, The Bacin Group was registered as Giordano's of Lincoln Park, Inc.
For this review, I went to the Bacino's location in the heart of Lincoln Park. There are three other locations, two downtown and one in the suburb of LaGrange. The building itself, both on the outside and the inside, is pretty nondescript. There is a bar on a different side of the restaurant that has a little more to look at. There is also a downstairs dining area that I've never seen used.
