In many ways, the first iteration of Great Lake, a pizzeria in the Chicago suburbs, was a victim of its own success. After famed GQ food critic Alan Richman said Great Lake served the “best pizza in America” in 2009, folks from across the country flocked to the shop.
As word spread, lines snaked out the door. It was nearly impossible to get a table. If you wanted to order pizza to go, you’d typically need to wait for hours for the order to be fulfilled—this is a fate that befell Richman, as well as celebrity visitors like Jay-Z and Beyonce. Great Lake closed in 2013, but, the Chicago Tribune reported, it was recently quietly reopened by its original owners a couple of blocks from its previous location.
During the shop’s first iteration—which took place from 2008-2013—the long waits ultimately led to tension between ownership and Great Lake’s clientele. The shop owners earned a reputation for being a bit surly, fair or unfair. The thing was, most people felt the pizza was worth the wait. In his otherwise ringing endorsement of Great Lake, Richman—who specifically named the shop’s Mortadella Pie the best in America, ranking it over Lucali’s Plain pie and Pizzeria Bianco’s Margherita with Proscuitto, among others—was fascinated by co-owner and pizza chef Nick Lessins’ mode of doing business.
“I stood inside, watching for twenty-five minutes as [Lessins] fashioned three pies, mine among them,” Richman wrote in 2010. “No man is slower. He makes each as though it is his first, manipulating the dough until it appears flawless, putting on toppings one small bit after another. In the time he takes to create a pie, civilizations could rise and fall, not just crusts.”
“The [Mortadella] pie,” Richman went on to write, “represents everything irresistible about the new American style of pizza making.”
It would be fair to say Lessins and Lydia Esparza—the husband-and-wife duo who co-founded the shop—felt GQ’s endorsement was a mixed blessing. In a 2010 interview with the New York Times, Lessins explained that the shop was not designed for volume. The Tribune reported that the shop also had “major problems” with its lease and “a reputation as being too difficult to just order pizza from.” The latter part, at least, seems to be rooted in the massive demand that followed GQ’s story being published, as well as Lessins’ diligent pizza making process.
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“The problem is GQ deals on a whole other scale than what our business is capable of handling,” Lessins said at the time. “Everyone forgot we were this small operation and couldn’t serve everyone. We never intended to serve mass quantities and have our product available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We wanted to start a business so we could get some control in our lives.”
Lessins’ commentary also hints at perhaps why the shop, this time around, seems to have gone out of its way to reopen quietly. The Tribune pointed out there is hardly any signage outside of the store—instead, a glass sign smaller “than a children’s shoebox” bearing the shop’s name is placed inside the window. Great Lake doesn’t have a website nor social media page, though they might add those soon, the Tribune reported. Moves like this, the couple seemed to imply, are designed to make the business more sustainable this time around.
“We want to be here a very long time, 20 years this time, when we’re in our 80s,” Esparza told the Tribune. The Windy City’s newspaper of record reported that the shop’s hours are “still in flux” but will “most likely” be 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. “Though this isn’t office work, we decided to keep it a day job,” Lessins added.
A Google search of Great Lake reveals Reddit threads of former customers who greatly missed the restaurant during its 12-year hiatus. “This place 100% lived up to the hype,” one Reddit user wrote upon hearing about Great Lake reopening. “It’s my canonical example of a place with [long] lines and weird service… where all is forgiven because the food is just that good.”
The Tribune story noted that Great Lake’s unceremonious approach to reopening is working thus far—maybe working a bit too well. The writer, Christopher Borrelli, visited the shop in the late afternoon and was told he was the fifth customer of the day. Judging by some of the quotes the owners made during the height of Great Lake’s run, the small number of customers might suit them just fine.
“We focused on the logistics and details of production, quality, execution and all the boring details of renting space, utilities, construction, permits and all this kind of stuff,” Lessins told the Times in 2010. “But public service was definitely an unknown thing. We know we can’t make everyone happy.”
In 2010, the Times also asked Lessins about what it felt like to be compared to the “Soup Nazi,” an infamous character on Seinfeld. The question seems to cite the tension between ownership and customers regarding the long waits and lack of willingness to make substitutions on different pizzas. Lessins’ response may sound like music to the ears of independent pizzeria owners who have experienced some of the things Lessins and Esparza went through during Great Lake’s initial stint.
“That [idea] comes from American culture,” Lessins told the Times. “The customer really isn’t always right. We believe we have the expertise to bring the best product. We don’t randomly put these ingredients together. We spend the time to test these and try them.”
