Shop Visit - Pizza Amelia
Chicago always needs more neighborhood pizzerias, and Roscoe Village just got a great one.
Opened by Connecticut transplant Mike Whittaker in September of 2024, Pizza Amelia is a one room pizzeria and slice shop in the heart of Roscoe Village that feels like it was plucked directly from the East Coast and dropped into one of my favorite neighborhoods in Chicago.
Pizza Amelia does 16-inch pies and slices that hit all the fundamental notes you’re looking for in a classic East Coast pizza, and I’d put it up there with Jimmy’s and Zaza’s as some of my favorite in the city.
Mike and his staff are fantastic, and their steady stream of Friday night regulars (and their dogs!) tell me the neighborhood has certainly embraced them — and they’re not the only ones, as they’re currently sporting a perfect (!!!) five-star rating on Google with 153 reviews.
Mike and I talked about growing up in Connecticut and basking in the New Haven pizza scene, how he ended up in Chicago, when legendary restaurants go corporate, why pizza is the perfect food, how to block out all the noise while you’re creating your own recipes, stealing cheese from Joe Beddia, why Roscoe Village was the ideal neighborhood for his shop, the difficulties in selling slices, lessons he learned from watching Doug Sohn, trying to figure out what you want the personality of your restaurant to be, and so much more!
Mike: Kids are creative. We're all creative. But when you get into school, that gets washed out because you take this curriculum, right? You kind of lose that. My brother is a big time chef, and I was in sales my entire life. But now I’m doing something that I’ve always wanted to do. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do this before. You feel like you have to follow a track. Go to school. Get a job. Try to get promotions. And all the stuff you like to do becomes your hobby. But you’re chasing it full-time. Which is very cool.
CPN: And you are too! And that’s always interesting to me. How people get to that point to go for it.
Mike: Let’s talk about it. Ask away.
CPN: Where'd you grow up, Mike?
Mike: I grew up in Milford, Connecticut.
CPN: Milford, CT.
Mike: Milford is a great town. Blue collar. Flatboard houses. Like Gloucester, Mass. We used to call it a small drinking town with a fishing problem. If you go back now, it's become more of a resort town. There’s 15 beaches. Boating. It's like the classic New England summer town. But it was great growing up in the 70s. No parental guidance. Doing whatever. Wild and free. And everybody longs for those days. But it was like, a 75% wash out of those kids. A lot of them didn't make it. Too much partying. I don't know what it is with the water, with beaches and drinking, but it's just too much. There were so many kids in the neighborhood, too. I don’t know when you grew up, but back then every family had three to five kids.
CPN: I was an 80s kid, so same thing.
Mike: 80s were a great time, too.
CPN: So what do you love about pizza?
Mike: I'm not trying to be clicé, but I think it's the perfect food. I mean, it's bread, it’s sauce, it's cheese, and if it's done right with balance, there’s nothing better. I don’t want to say it's in my blood, but growing up in the New Haven area, getting pizza was special. It was exciting. There was a respect. There were places that had been making pizza for 100 years at that point. And it wasn’t always easy to get the pizza. You’d call for hours! They wouldn't even answer the phone. They still don't! But now they've gotten more corporate. But there’s a moment when you get your pizza and you’re sitting there — you know how when you walk into Wrigley Field, it just never gets old. It’s beautiful. And you don’t get too many moments like that.
CPN: It reminds me of one of my favorite things, which is when the lights go all the way down right before the movie starts, and there’s a part of you that still doesn’t know what’s about to happen, no matter how many movies you’ve been to before. It’s that same thing where you’re like, this could be incredible.
Mike: And you can’t just create that. It doesn’t happen everywhere. And we’d tell each other about it. “I got Sally’s tonight!” The pizza in that area is phenomenal. There's a nostalgia about pizza where it's like, wherever you go, people tell you you gotta try this place. When I first moved out some friends told me, “You have to go to Barnaby’s. It’s the best!” And we went. And it was okay. But people always remember pizza. Steve Dolinsky was out here a while ago and we were talking about that, and he said pizza is nostalgic because it reminds people of being in high school. And no responsibilities. And your first girlfriend, or whatever. But New England pizza is truly special. They keep it so simple. And pizza has always been undervalued. Think about it, a pizza has always been like 15 bucks, and it could feed two or three people.
CPN: What do you love about making pizza?
Mike: I'm still coming around on that. I never made pizza before, like, seriously made pizza, until last summer. It was not easy. I had all these different dough balls. Some recipes use sugar. Some people use malt. All the different yeasts. And when I hit it, I took a bite, and I was like, this is very close. And then I got excited, and then I thought I was done! And then I realized, it's never done. You're never done. You can use the same recipe every day, but the yeast, and the dough, it’s a living thing. Sometimes I have to throw dough away and I’m like, I have no idea how this overproofed. It’s a psychological battle with the dough sometimes. It's like, I'm not gonna let it get to me today. You know, all because the temperature is a little bit off. So, yeah, just experimenting and trying to make it better. And the best thing I like happens right here. Watching people take the first bite, and then they make that face. That makes my night. But I've had people talk about the char, too. It's Chicago, not New Haven, so they think it’s burnt. It’s not. But I had to kind of back off that a little bit. And I don't understand tavern pizza all that much. I know people like it, but to me the cheese doesn't melt right. I don’t know.
CPN: What made you decide to start making it last summer?
Mike: I didn’t want to be held hostage. We had a really good chef, and we have a great chef now, but I needed to understand it because I can’t have my business relying on someone else. You have to know. I wanted to know the pizza inside and out. And I went deep. I must have looked at over a thousand videos.
CPN: YouTube?
Mike: Oh, yeah. And anyone who runs a successful restaurant, their recipes are out there. But who knows if they’re accurate? So, you kind of have to, like, figure it out on your own in your space. But it's all the same stuff. A lot of people just use the four ingredients, right? My cousin just opened up his own place and he's like, “Mike, you’ve gotta put Crisco in your dough.” What the fuck are you talking about? Crisco?!? But you read about all these guys who just did it. And they’re on my bucket list. Like, Lucali, in Brooklyn.
CPN: See, Mark is that guy who goes on TV and says, “This is my recipe.” But meanwhile anyone who knows him is saying, that’s definitely not his recipe. He’s not giving away his recipe.
Mike: Of course not. Or like Joe Beddia in Philly. I got stuck on him for like a month. I even called the company he uses to try and get his cheese, because if he’s making his like this and I can do that too then mine will be as good. But it’s not. It’ll never be the same. Everyone has their own technique, and they’re always changing and improving.
CPN: So I think I can guess, after what you've said so far, but what was your first favorite pizza growing up? Sally's?
Mike: That's it. Sally’s is it. You know, they used to spread the sauce by hand! When I was a kid, I would watch them. No gloves or anything. I always found that interesting. The two brothers, Bobby and Rickie, they recently sold it. They were the sons of Sally and Flo Consiglio. And they sold it for like three million dollars. But they were like the McDonald brothers. They weren’t gonna be able to take it to another level. But now it’s done. They sell chicken wings, and t-shirts. They got four locations. And Pepe has 12 locations!
CPN: Will you eat Pepe, or Modern?
Mike: It's always the big three, right? Can't get into Sally’s, you go to Pepe’s. And Pepe’s has an offshoot called The Spot. And some people like Modern better. But Sally's is just a headache. Like, you'd wait to get in. And everybody claims they have their back phone number, which a lot of people did. But you’d wait for an hour just to get in to Sally’s, then you'd have to wait another hour. And people just saunter. They had a cadence where they weren't overly customer service. They didn't pay any attention to you, which in some odd way makes you want it more. So you’d have to love it to be in there. And we did. It’d be like, wow, I’m finally getting this pizza.
CPN: Then that becomes part of the experience.
Mike: For sure. It’s a part of the experience.
CPN: It’s the same thing at Lucali. You have to get there early and stand in line just to try and get a table for a few hours later. Do you go to Sally’s every time you go back?
Mike: I try to. I haven't been back to Milford in a couple years, but I want to go back this summer. But New Haven pizza in general is just amazing. Like, I would eat pizza there every day. And there was a bunch of other places, too. Ernie’s. There’s tons of bars with great pizza. And places in Milford, too.
CPN: How did you end up in Chicago?
Mike: My brother is a long time chef out here. I was in Philly, working for Carnation, and I would come visit. It's the perfect big city, right? People are nice. I got laid. I got drunk. It was summertime. It was great. It's the best big city to live in in the world to me. It's affordable. What’s that saying? You can do 80% of the stuff here you can do in New York, but with 20% of the effort.
CPN: So what made you decide you wanted to open a pizzeria?
Mike: I know it sounds really cliche, but when you grow up in that area, it's in your blood. But it was being naive, too. I had no idea. I thought I was just gonna work in front and be friendly and chatter, and my guy Jay would make the pies and everything would be smooth. But food service is a lot of work. I’m making dough. I’m making sauce. I’m baking pies. I’m running POS and answering the phones. But I'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel where it's like, okay, the bigger we get then we can bring more people in. And I can get picnic benches outside. We still gotta figure out what we want to do. Do we want to be a 100 pie shop? Or do we want to do 50, or 75, and drink some beers, have some fun, and be kind of a cool, little spot. You start to do more, and then you have to figure out how much you want to do. I remember when we hit 30 pies and I was like, wow, we did 30 pies. But Jimmy’s probably does, what, 300 pies a night?!?
CPN: Did it take off faster than you thought?
Mike: It took off the very first day we opened. We opened on Roscoe just to try and get it out there and do slices, and we ended up doing 1500 slices in a couple days. It was like, wow, this neighborhood really wanted slices of pizza. And we had to work at getting our slices correct, too. Getting the size right. It was really inconsistent. But we can make 10 slice pies and they just go like that (snaps). They go really fast. But they stop us in our tracks sometimes, too. We’ll be jamming, and we’ll have lots of pies up on the board, but then we’ll get hit with a bunch of slices. So we’ve got to figure out a better way to handle the slice business. Most of the time we’re sold out of slices by 7 o’clock. And a lot of places don’t even do slices, and I can see why. But the idea was always to be part of the community. We got a lot of kids in here, and I love that, because I was a kid and I loved pizza. And pizza has been undervalued for a really long time. Pizza and tacos, right? Like everyone has an idea of what they think they pizza and tacos should cost. But now you’re getting really high end people making pizza, and pizzas are $30 or $40 bucks, easy. And they all have a story behind it. Here’s our fermentation. Here’s how we proof. Here’s why it’s sourdough. And for a long time Chicago had a low bar. I’m not trying to knock it. But it’s reputation as a pizza city was based solely off deep-dish. It was never based off anything else.
CPN: Absolutely. And it’s been interesting to watch that shift. Tavern is definitely recognized nationally now, in the same way Detroit exploded like 10 years ago. Other cities are starting to make it.
Mike: And I like the deep-dish. It's fantastic. But how often can you eat that pizza? Once every six months. Chicagoans and the Midwest, they love cheese. And they love seing it all stretchy and gooey, but it’s like, why? That’s not good. It just means you’re using cheap cheese. I don’t want to cut through and inch of cheese. Eric, if you let a slice of that sit there for five minutes and you came back, are you gonna want to eat that? It’s gonna be coagulated and sticky. You want that in your body?
CPN: When you put it like that…
Mike: Give me good cheese that melts evenly.
CPN: When you were putting your shop together, was there any shops that inspired you, or maybe you wanted to emulate a little bit? I'm looking at your walls, and they remind me of Pepe's a bit. That crisp, clean white tile.
Mike: The idea was a New York takeout/delivery slice shop. Keeping it simple. We had never done this before, but we learned, and my partner’s a smart dude. I'd never run business before, but I knew I had like a lot of people I could to turn to for support. But we still don’t know what we’re going to be in some ways. There’s this place in Philly called Angelo’s, and they don't have a phone. They don't have any online motor. You go there, you order, and you wait. And it’s the number one pizza joint in Philly. You’re not allowed in the place! There’s a bouncer at the door, and you give your order, and then he yells the name. And that’s so interesting. A pizza place that doesn’t have a phone and no online ordering? They must make a really good pie. We’re in our walking stage, right now. And we crawled for like, four or five months. And now we’re geting more comfortable with 50-60 pies a night. But if the demand goes up, and hopefully it does, then we’ll have to make adjustments to that. But the idea was a small space. And keep it simple. And we didn’t pay attention to overhead or anything at first. But now we are. And we’re starting to realize the potential. I think it’s gonna be hard to get a pie here — not for you — in a few months if we don’t figure out hot to be better. And to do it more efficient. But we could not be in a better place right now. Sometimes I step back and think, I can’t believe such a dinky place with one product is doing this. But that’s also what’s cool, and what I like about it. And people ask if we’re gonna do like, salads. But that’s a whole nother level of foodservice then. And you have to get different plates. And flatware. And servers. The idea is just to put out a really good, high quality ingredient, fresh pizza. And I think the neighborhood really needed it. The location was the most important thing to us. And we looked at other locations. And there’s lots of spots you think would do really well because they’re more dense, but they don’t. Like we looked on Lincoln Avenue, but there’s not foot traffic. Everyone drives. But Roscoe is such a community neighborhood. There’s 7,000 people that live here, and they’re all in this Facebook group, and they all follow us now. If I went outside and spit on the sidewalk, it would be on the Facebook group! And I know some people would be like, it’s Facebook, who cares? They care. 7,000 people care.
CPN: It’s a different kind of neighborhood like that. My wife spent a lot of time in New York, and she's always said, this is one of the neighborhoods that reminds her of New York in that way.
Mike: There's no 25 year-olds in this neighborhood. If you're just out of college, you're not living here. There's no public transportation. There's no apartments. It's all houses. There's not really that much to do. You don't have lake access, either. So if you're just graduating college you’re going Lakeview or Lincoln Park, maybe Wicker if you got a little funkiness to you. So this neighborhood is moms and babies and strollers. And in some ways it’s underdeveloped. But they don’t want to be Southport. They don’t want to be Armitage.
CPN: And that’s exactly what I like about it. Village Discount Outlet is still here, and that’s in the fabric of the neighborhood.
Mike: But I think there is desire for a little bit more, because it would attract people to walk around here more. But I don’t think that warrants like a Vuori or Arc’teryx or what have you. I’m honestly surprised there’s a Starbucks here. But we got lucky that we found this.
CPN: Why is it called Pizza Amelia?
Mike: My daughter. I don't know whether she likes it or not, though.
CPN: How’d she react when you told her?
Mike: I think she thinks it's cool. She pops in every once in a while and works the Italian ice. She’ll work POS on the weekends, too.
CPN: Family shop! That’s what you want. How would you describe your pizza?
Mike: It’s not really New York, because I don’t like the flop of New York. It’s more of a…like Regina’s in Boston has a bit of a crispiness to it, because it’s cooked a little more. So I think it’s more of a balance between like Jersey and Boston. New Haven is a different animal. I can’t even think bout New Haven pizza, because it’s a set up for failure. New Haven is all AP flour, and a different rise. I'm using more of a high protein flour, which is what they use in New York. So I kind of steered it toward New York, but without the floppiness. But I need to get more leopard spots on the bottom, so it's got a little more structure to it. But I respect the balance of New York. It’s perfect. It’s not over cheesed, or over sauced. And it’s hard to get balance in Chicago.
CPN: Where did your dough recipe come from?
Mike: Trial and error. And trying to block out all the noise, because everyone is telling me something different. What temperature the water has to be. Or no, you have to let it sit out for this long before you put it in the cooler. And I still struggle with that. What can we do to make it better? Is it too salty? Is it not salty enough? Should I put malt in it to get more color on the crust? But every time I try something else with it, I’m always like, it was better before. Up until last week I was experimenting with flours. I was trying all different Caputos. And my pizza chef was like, what are you doing?!? I’m just trying to make it better. I don’t think you ever stop thinking about it. And I’m getting hung up on this fresh mozz thing now. All the best places use fresh mozz. But then that’s another step. And another expense. But I would do it if it makes for a better cheese pizza. And my focus is always the cheese pizza. That’s how you tell if a pizza is any good.
CPN: If I go somewhere I’ve never been before, that’s what I get. That’s always the baseline.
Mike: Never get a large. Always get a small, too. They cook better. Large can get too mushy. They can get soupy, and wet in the middle. And I’m always surpised when people want so many veggies because of all the moisture. And then that’s a whole nother thing, too. Some people cook their toppings before they use them. I’m always learning. I just changed the way I cut the mushrooms and it works so much better. And it presents so much better. You eat with your eyes first, right?
CPN: And especially with everyone taking pictures of everything before they eat it now. You have to be aware of that. It’s a legitimate business factor.
Mike: Exactly. And we’re just trying to be honest. And to keep it simple. But I can see where people cut corners now. Our cheese is $25 a bag, and that makes about eight pizzas — so it’s about three dollars worth of cheese on each pizza. And I’m never gonna mess with that, because people like it and it’s worth it. I want our ingredients to speak for themselves.
CPN: What’s your dough process like? How long are you fermenting?
Mike: I'm trying to get away from 24 hours, though we can do 24 hours and have it taste really good. But I think it tastes a little better at 48. But we’re always checking it. Like if the water temp is warmer and it starts proofing faster, then we’ll take it out because I know we can’t let it sit another day. Like I said, the dough is a living, breathing thing. And every day when I come in I’m like, what am I gonna see today? The whole idea is to try and control the process, right? And that’s why people buy these crazy electric ovens. Jimmy’s has got a $100,000 oven and you put the pie in and it comes out pefect. And I can’t even imagine that. That oven would take up our whole shop. But the idea to try and control every aspect? It’s almost like science, now.
CPN: Baking is definitely science.
Mike: But some of the best places back East, I’ll talk to these guys about how they’re making it, and they’re not doing that. They’re like, “I get a bucketful of water, and I throw in a handful of yeast…” And I’m just like, what the fuck?!? I’m out here measuring kilograms. This is supposed to be precise! But we’re a minmum of 24 hours. Unbromated, unbleacher flour. We don’t use sugar. And I know a lot of people do. But I think you need that more for like baker’s yeast, or a brick yeast. Not for active dry. When you make pizza, what kind of yeast do you use?
CPN: Active dry.
Mike: And I don’t think we need anything to stimulate the yeast.
CPN: I know sometimes the sugar is for the browning aspect though, too.
Mike: But oil is for browing, too. And we use olive oil. A lot of places don’t. But I think it really helps with the structure. But if you want to keep it basic, I get it. Just use the four. If you talk to Billy (Bill Jacobs from Piece), that’s it.
CPN: That’s the first pizza book I ever got — Flour Water Salt Yeast. It seems like the neighborhood has really embraced you all, did that happen right away?
Mike: Yeah. You know, people were grateful. They thanked us for being here. They wanted us to be open longer, too.
CPN: What are you now, 4-9?
Mike: 4-9, or 4-8:30. I want to open up the outdoor space and maybe stay open until 10, but I have no desire to serve drunk people. I don’t even want to get into that.
CPN: Do you see that in this neighborhood?
Mike: Not at all. It’s just thirtysomething parents. But again, it’s being part of the community. And that just makes me want to give back, keep working on our product, keep our prices down, and keep doing what we’re doing. I’d rather do 50 phenomenal pies, than 100 half-assed ones. And I have people texting me their orders now. And I’m constantly asking them for feedback. I don’t know how many places are doing that? And I’ll call customers sometimes. There’s been times I feel like we haven’t sent out our best pizza and I’ll call someone to apologize and tell them the next one’s on me and they’re like, “Mike, what are you talking about?”
CPN: That's good, though. You’re never going to go wrong by holding on to those standards.
Mike: I think it’s just my nature, too. And maybe I’ll get to a point where I pull back because I know we’ve got a good thing. But I’m the middle child of five kids. And I was in sales for 35 years, selling to high end executives. So this is easy to me. Talking to people. Customer service. I’m made for that. I just want people to enjoy it. And if you don’t, tell me what’s wrong and I’ll make it better. I want people to have a good experience.
CPN: You're certainly doing good so far. You have a perfect 5.0 rating on Google with over 150 reviews. That's basically unheard of.
Mike: I don’t think you can get too caught up in that. You just have to do your best, and see what happens. And that’s what I love about it. Every day I come in here and I don’t know what’s gonna happen.
CPN: Isn’t that part of the appeal, though? And why it’s exciting?
Mike: It is. And somehow at the end of the night, it all wraps up. And I have to learn to step back a little bit. I’m probably too hands on. I need to trust in my people working here. I’m friends with Doug Sohn, you know, and in 13 years he never missed a day. And I can understand why now. I was always like, enjoy it more! Have somebody else help do it for you! But there’s something to wanting to make sure that the experience is right, and everything is going out right. Having that piece of mind.
CPN: What’s unique about Pizza Amelia as a shop?
Mike: The simplicity of what we do. The idea of doing one item the best we know how using the highest quality ingredients. That simplicity also carries over to the service and experience. I love it when I see people enjoying a slice and just relaxing or chatting it up with us, sort of leave your worries at the door. A good slice brings back a lot of good memories.
CPN: Other pizza in Chicago that you love?
Mike: Jimmy's, ZaZa's, Paulie Gee's, Craft Pizza. But my favorite is Piece and my mentor and good friend Bill Jacobs.
CPN: Last one, how does it feel when someone says you make their favorite pizza?
Mike: Honestly, it stops me in my tracks. I get emotional when I hear that, and I’m beyond grateful.
I’ve heard great things