The #1 Deep Dish Pizza In Chicago Sells Out In 45 Minutes

Pizza is one of Chicago’s most iconic foods – the most famous among them being deep-dish pizza. Many legendary pizzerias can be found in this city, all crafting different styles of pizza, yet one seems to stand above the rest.

Milly’s Pizza In The Pan isn’t your typical pizzeria. Robert Maleski, the owner, carefully crafts each pizza by hand with his team, using high-quality ingredients on an extremely limited, day-to-day basis. While many pizzerias in the city typically sell hundreds of pizzas a day, Robert only makes around 70. The reason is simple – quality over quantity. Customers must pre-order their pizza beforehand, selecting a timeslot for pickup to get their hands on one of his signature, caramelized cheese crust pies.

Robert has acquired many accolades for his style of pan pizza at Milly’s, including being named the #1 pizza in Chicago by Chicago Magazine, as well as #11 pizzeria in the world from TimeOut. I had a blast shooting with him and his team to see exactly what goes on behind the scenes to make the best pizza in Chicago.

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Milly’s Pizza In The Pan:
https://www.instagram.com/millys_pizza_in_the_pan/
https://www.facebook.com/millyspizzainthepan/
https://www.millyspizzachi.com/
925 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL 60622

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Every good pizza maker will tell you that the dough is the number one most important thing. If you don’t have good dough, you’re not going to have good pizza. And that’s period. Pizza’s iconic here in Chicago. A lot of people that are traveling try to hunt down for the deep dish pizza. There’s so many different styles of pizza that a lot of people don’t know about. I make a pan pizza. We do it kind of in a unique different way. layer the cheese on top of the dough. So when it bakes, we have that ring of caramelized cheese going all the way around. So it looks burnt, but it tastes incredible. Every week we’re using more cheese than we are flour. We do typically sell out before we open and that still blows my mind. I get to make pizzas for a living, man. That’s incredible. I mean, it’s just amazing. Chicago magazine giving us number one. They didn’t even tell me that the day the magazine came out. It was mindblowing to me. And it’s also incredibly humbling as well. I get such a fulfilling feeling out of making incredible pizza. When I get home, I’m dreaming in pizza. [Music] My name is Robert Mleski and I’m the owner of Milliey’s Pizza in the Pan in Chicago, Illinois. I typically get here at around 8:30 in the morning and I’m checking the weather cuz that’s kind of crucial to making really good dough. Coming in in the morning and having peace and quiet and just totally zening out on making dough is like one of the best parts of my day. I don’t have to talk to anyone. I can just enjoy the quiet. [Music] We uh we add some honey to our dough. gives a moistness to the dough, stickiness, but it’s like giving the the yeast kind of a red bowl, so it like gets kickstarted right away. So, this is equal parts flour and water. And we add a little bit of fresh cake yeast to this. This is incredibly important to my pizza. It enhances the flavor of the dough. It’s kind of like a cheat. To me, what makes amazing pizza, I mean, the dough is the foundation. I just love like the tweaking on it. You’re constantly having to adjust it. If it’s really hot out, you want to use colder water. There’s a science behind it. And it’s one of the most humbling things. This dough recipe has taken me probably close to 1,000 hours, I would say. A lot of flour, a lot of time, a lot of failing. There’s days where I nail every pizza and then the very next day you come in and you just fall flat on your face. They’re all a disaster. It’s exciting. Probably one of the things I love most about making pizza is just really nice to come in make dough. It’s almost meditative. So, I just really enjoy it. It’s also a creative aspect to it. So, it’s like really cool to just tinker with the dough and tweak it. And when it comes out right, it’s an incredible feeling. One of the other really important components to pizza is the sauce. We use tomato magic stains tomatoes. Beautiful color. They shine themselves. Just a regular can of fire would break all the time. Thing’s breaking. Sometimes it takes forever to open up the cans, kosher salt, dried oregano, red pepper flakes, and garlic powder. Why we don’t cook our sauces because uncooked sauce is a lot more vibrant than the cooked sauce. I don’t know. I just like settled on just simplicity. I think if you use an incredible tomato, why drown it out with all these different flavors, you know? Again, I want the tomatoes to be the star of the show. Very good sauce. So, we do something kind of unique here. We make a limited amount of pizzas. People would pre-order, they pick a time slot, order their pizza, and that’s when their pizza’s ready. I’m untitled one. That’s from my favorite band in Chicago, Cat and Jazz. Uh Updog is from What We Do in the Shadows. One of my favorite shows. Clickbait. I was Everyone like back in the day that was like a popular term. Craigslist.org is a popular like Chicago website where you can buy random things or get random helps. Tom Skilling, he’s a famous weatherman. He just recently retired. So I kind of just that’s our like newest pizza. Our most popular pizza here is Only Fans. Just my play on only fans. You know, has pepperoni, pesto, calabar, and chili, honey, ricotta. But only pans is king here at Millies. We’re doing 70 pizzas today, which it will be a new record for us. And if we’ve sold out, I need to shut the system down so no one else can order it. The fastest I’ve ever sold out is around the 45minute mark. when we got pressed from time out that we were like the 11th best pizzeria in the world. Yeah, it was it was wild. We sold out for the day and it’s 10:30 in the morning, so he made the dough. He can’t add the seasoning in the beginning cuz the salt eats the yeast. Just take the dough. You eat the dough. Yeah. You got to taste it. Is this dough going to taste good? I mean, sign of a good pizza. The raw dough is tasting good. Midday around 1:00, we pretty much do the most important step of the day, which is placing the dough into the pans. It can take close to 2 hours to press all of the doughs. [Music] So when you’re pressing the doughs, you want everything to be as even across as possible so the pizza looks really nice when it comes out of the pan. [Music] This is kind of the side of the pizza. If there’s one side that’s higher than the other, the sauce is going to just escape. [Music] You like the slightest slightest bit of curve. So there’s the cheese pressed there. He even changed mine. He’s the ultimate perfectionist. We press our dough into the pans hours before it’s supposed to be made. And we let it rise. I think that gives it a a more airy feel. It’s lighter. It’s not as heavy. It’s not as dense. Beer like it was used. Are you a bully in school? I was the opposite actually. Oh, you got bullied. Yeah, kind of. See, I knew I hurt to hurt people. [Music] So, we get our uh delivery once a week here for our ingredients. comes on a huge pallet. For flour, I would have to say 250 lb. Pepperoni, we’re going through maybe close to 100 lb of pepperoni, 40 gallons of sauce, 50 lb of peppers, 40 lb of cremeni, mushrooms, cheese, we’re going through maybe close to 300 lb. We use a pound and a half of cheese on every pizza. And I think we are using more cheese than we use flour. That’s galbani. It’s from Italy. Whole milk part skin mozzarella. We buy it in 5 lb logs. So, we slice it ourselves. We use about 20 to 21 slices on the large. And then we use about 12 slices on the smaller pizzas. You want to cut it at a certain thickness. It’s got to be like just right because if it’s too thin, when you take the pizza out of the pan, that cheese isn’t going to be able to hold the weight of the toppings and everything’s going to collapse. Since we do it by hand and we don’t have an automated slicer, this is like close to an hour to an hour and like 20 minutes. Stand with your feet pointed out slightly. Since you’re going to be standing so long, it kind of helps with your back. Almost like playing an instrument, you know, where you’re constantly tweaking it. You say cheese is an instrument. a delicious instrument when you and practically get along. See how it’s like perfectly even all the way across. So, this is going to be able to hold all of the toppings in. It’s going to caramelize beautifully. There are two separate cuts. These are like the nice cuts that we use for the sides of the pizza. And then these are like the end caps. This is what we’ll put on the bottom of the pizza. What are we doing? Oh, we’re going to Veto and Nick’s like considered one of the most legendary pizzeras. I’m really excited. What kind of pizza they got? Tavern style. That’s our the most popular style in Chicago. Checking out different pizzeras, legendary ones. Not only a lot of fun, but you can learn a lot, too. Why would I not seek out someone that’s been doing it for 30, 40 years? Tobito and Nick 105 years. There’s so many like legendary pizza places here in Chicago. There’s so many characters and some of them are just hilarious, you know, to get to hang out with and learn. I remember faces. I don’t remember faces. Probably 1967 is how old I was at. And there’s one. This one about 67 68, right? I can’t even open real quick. Yeah. Every time you open it, you lose 50°. Yeah. Another cool thing about Chicago Pizza is that we’re all like are rooting for one another. We’re all supporting one another. We’ll easily call each other up and say, “Hey, how did you do that?” Or, you know, “What do you think about this?” It’s really really cool to be a part of. We have two slappers, bench guy, oven guy. How many pizzas do you pump by? They got slammed at night, so they probably made a few hundred yesterday. [Music] This looks amazing. It’s like cracker thin. You’re going to feel like a crisp and everything. Like a cracker crunch. So, I usually like these corner slices. Oh, yeah. Oh wow. This is the best tavern pizza I’ve ever had. Balance of cheese and sauce. The ratio is like perfect. Look at the structure of that. It’s zero flop. Perfectly crackery crust. Beautiful. Got the other pizza here. Sausage and jarred in there. Jar is a very Chicago thing. I’m excited to try this. I’m in heaven, man. Some of the best pizza I’ve had in a long, long time. So, it doesn’t get any better than this. All right, where are we going now? So, I’m taking you to Chicago’s most legendary deep dish spot, Lumal Nadis. Get this. A deep dish sausage. Medium. That’s like six slices of you. You probably have leftovers for sure. Yeah, we’ll do that. [Music] Thank you. Cracker buttery crust. See how much sausage there is on there. Packed with garlic. There’s chunks of tomatoes. Beautifully melted cheese. It’s like your classic Lumal Nadis pizza. Oh yeah. M. Oh my god. Round two. Happy. Oh yeah. My happy place for sure. This is our cold prep table. So, we have all our cheeses here, which we have our meats over here, the pepperoni and the pulled sausage. Yeah, this is Rosa Grande pepperoni. It cups up really nice and it has really good flavors. We put complimentary fresh mozzarella on top of each pizza. So when we like close the box with that heat, it just melts on it and it’s just like perfect. Pesto, ricotta, and honey. This is such a strong combo. So it’s just like a cheat code on pizza. Which pizza does I go? Only pizza. We’re starting to get all the final prep done with the spinach, filling up the ricotta bags, getting the mozzarella out, getting the stations ready for battle, basically, you know, start to feel kind of butterflies. I still get nervous every single day making pizzas. So, it’s a deck oven with five decks. They’re pretty rare in the city because they’re so huge and amazing for making pizzas. Just to move, it’s like 15 20 grand, but to get one new is probably like 30 to 40k. Since there’s five decks in there, it’s telling you what deck is coming up in the door. Have you named your oven yet? No. I I want to think of a good name, but no, I have not. You should call it George. [Music] We’ve all worked together for quite a while that we barely even need to talk to each other at this point. We all kind of know what it takes to get the job done. Every single pizza we make is caramelized cheese crosso. It’s pretty important that we nail that. We layer the cheese to lay on the lip of the pan. So, as the heat’s conducting on the pan in the oven, that cheese is starting to have the mayard reaction and caramelize. If you’ve ever made like a grilled cheese with a lot of cheese in it and it melts into the pan and then that cheese starts cooking in the industry, they call it a preco crust cuz this is a newer oven and like every pie looks juicy. I know that’s a weird term, but it just like looked succulent and like appetizing. [Music] 514s, no toms. We try to get all the pizzas in one time slot on one deck. 4:00s are on deck one. 4:15s are on deck two. It was all these little details. We don’t even time the bakes. It’s all visual. I can tell instantly if the pizza’s done. It just becomes second nature after you’ve like done tens of thousands. [Music] The timing is critical. We kind of like all swarm on the pizzas once they come out. If you let it sit there, you’re taking a chance of that pizza getting stuck in the pan. Super garnishes. We want to make sure that the pizza looks beautiful, too. So, we got to get those on there as well. Especially when it comes out. I want to try to get the Freo crust loose as fast as possible cuz we want to let that steam escape. Even if you can do that for 20 seconds, it can improve the quality of the pizza immensely. [Music] These are both for Jacob. One of four for that for Nicole. It’s really easy to fall behind if you’re not staying on top of it. That’s amazing. It may not look like I’m paying that much attention, but I’m watching everything. I’m thinking about the pizzas in the oven, but I’m also looking towards the future. This is two of two for Maui. One pizza for Ashlin. Two for Liz. My pizza’s for Kelly. The other Liz is still on the oven. Liz is in the sport, bro. Truly perfect pizzas. I would say there’s only a handful in my whole 5 years. I’m always looking at the mistakes. I could tweak that or I could have changed that. No two days are alike. It’s exciting. Even on the rough days when everything’s going wrong, I get excited. you worked so hard on that recipe, but when you do hit on that one, it’s just an amazing feeling like, wow, I I made that for me. I’m on cloud n4. [Music] [Music] The 14 is a time. [Music] If it looks good and then it tastes good on top of that, I mean, that’s another level of happiness. There’s a long history pizza in Chicago. I’m just blessed to like be one person that’s making pizza and and to get people telling you that it’s some of the best they’ve ever had is it’s just such a fulfilling feeling. What size? What is What is that? Done. Just a piece of bread. It’s like a snack. A little olive oil, salt, pepper. It’s my favorite. Perfect. That’s also why I didn’t think about the jet. How you doing? Good. Good. See you. You want to dine in, right? Yeah. Awesome. You want a water? Yeah, for sure. This is beautiful. It’s phenomenal. It is so good. The build of the pizza is like technically perfect. Visually, it is stunning. It’s crisp and crunchy. Thank you. Mhm. Appreciate it. [Music] M. It’s good, right? Holy moly. Now that’s a good pizza. Thank you very much. Hey. Yeah. Listen, Jeff. Jeff, are you picking up? We are sold out. Sorry, guys. Not many fans. Oh, what’s all this stuff? We’re trying to come up with a new like vegetarian pizza. So, trial and error. We’ll see how it turns out. Sour cream and ricotta with a little bit of honey, a sweet cherries, and then there’s also nectarine. They have some arugula, balsamic reduction, blue cheese that’ll crumble on there. These kind of pizzas, the ingredients can be like pretty costly. You know, they sell pretty well. Trying the new thing with the tank on the bottom cuz a really cool person told me about it. Starting to bubble up. Pretty solid. Wa. Looks pretty good. A nice golden brown. Obviously, it’s got to taste good. Oh, you can see it on the breadcrumbs. It’s crazy. Blue cheese has some kick. I took pushidto and cooked it in the oven and like crisp it up and put it on here. I think that would add a lot of you want to try the pizza. It’s really good. The crust is crazy. Yeah. The ankle. You want to try the pizza? Oh, yeah. after like everyone’s done and I’m closing up the shop, you know, I’m just kind of winding down. The adrenaline’s wearing off. Honestly, most of the time I’m feeling pretty tired. I’m also like looking back like, “Wow, this is really cool. I get to do this for a living.” And what we’re doing right now is we’re dividing the dough for tomorrow’s service. We made the dough this morning and the big ones and then I’ll do the small ones. And we place it in the fridge to cold ferment overnight. Start our day with dough and we end it with dough. I think there’s a lot to be said for giving it your all every single day. [Music] I mean, what I personally love about pizza is it’s a craft. It takes a lot of hard work and it’s something that you create. And it’s also incredibly humbling as well. Milliey’s is uh my grandmother. She made everything from scratch. So, I just fell in love with cooking. I’ve always wanted to open a restaurant since I was a kid. You know, one thing that I never really talked about was like my father passed away from a heart attack. That was one of the driving forces why I started this pizzeria. Before that, I wasn’t really doing anything with my life. So, I wanted to show him before he passed away like I’m going to make something of myself. I want to make you proud, you know. You know, he loved talking about pizza right before he passed away. How’s the pizza business? Yeah. [Music] Restaurant life can be hard on the family, too, because you’re here. It’s a 24/7 job. My son, he was just born 7 weeks ago. I never thought I was going to be a father ever in my life. His name’s Jacob. You feel an immense love like I’ve never felt before for this human being the moment I saw him. I I’m working hard every single day with him in mind. you know, while I’m working, a lot of that time, a lot of the time that I’m [Music] a lot of the time that I’m zening out and I’m thinking about him, you know, and I’m daydreaming about my son. [Music] I just want him to be proud, you know. I just want him to be proud. I hope that he is. I’m proud of what I’ve done. So, I hope that he feels the same. [Music]