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Chicago Tribune

Chicago pizza royalty Great Lake returns, idiosyncratic as ever

Great Lake, the legendary (and legendarily iconoclastic) pizza joint that fixated (and sometimes frustrated) Andersonville for five years, has returned, a dozen years later. 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's 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. When I visited on a late afternoon, she looked at me and laughed: I was the fifth customer of the day. 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: He asked because he was the only one there at 10 a.m. and the vibes this time were …That's 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 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's assistants — 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. But right now, it's quiet, and to some extent, I think, They're still figuring out what they want to be this time around, and they're doing it very casually. Hours — most likely 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday — are still in flux. Even the menu seems decidedly loose, prone to whim — some days they've been making open-faced sandwiches using Lessins' moist rectangular bricks of Nordic rye and porridge bread; and most days they're doing a couple types of pizza — no additions, no substitutes. (You'll have to phone to hear what they have.) 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 'a restaurant.' Or 'a pizza place.' That's why it's not Great Lake Pizza. 'Maybe 'food shop/grocery,'' Esparza said. 'Yeah, or 'bakery/grocery,'' Lessins said. 'One that happens to have a kitchen.' If you remember the old Great Lake, none of this will be surprising. The quality of the food — and I've tried a few things — 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's in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was as refreshing as lemonade. But what's 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'll get a sign for the front window that, unlike the current sign, is larger than a children's shoebox. But they continue to do things their way. They want you to come in and order from them, face to face. This is personal, Esparza said: 'We want to be here a very long time, 20 years this time, when we're in our 80s.' Indeed, so far, most of their customers have been old customers who are delighted and can't believe they're 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. One thing they learned between installments of Great Lake was to value their time. 'Though this isn't office work, we decided to keep it a day job,' Lessins said. 'We're thinking mental health, how it's important to eat earlier,' Esparza said. 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's, white corn and beans from California, Japanese rice from New York. Esparza makes a great olive oil chocolate tea cake. The look of the place is entirely by Esparza, who designed and set out its terrazzo floor — she is a veteran of Herman Miller's west Michigan headquarters. Esparza even has a name for the warm, minimalistic airiness — 'gramma modern.' The goal this time, Lessins said, is to 'just let the food speak for itself, and if that means we're less predictable than some people would like, well, then we're less predictable.' Being idiosyncratic, after all, is not arrogance. 'Everything we do — the way we operate, the small businesses we want to support on our shelves, just encouraging you to vote with your dollar — is because we give a (expletive),' Esparza said. 'To be honest, you could say we give (expletive) too much.' As if on cue, the door opened, a man looked around, befuddled: 'Is this Great Lake? The pizza place?' Good question.