In November 1942, a Chicago tavern called The Pelican closed its doors at 29 E. Ohio Street. Thirteen months later, a restaurant opened in that same spot that would eventually get credit for inventing America’s favorite plate of baked carbs: deep dish pizza. The man who became famous for that invention, a former University of Texas football lineman and liquor salesman named Ike Sewell, likely wasn’t even a business partner yet when the first pie came out of the oven.
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The restaurant was Pizzeria Uno, and its sister location, Pizzeria Due, opened a block away a decade later. Together they built one of the most repeated origin stories in American food — Sewell, the gregarious ex-athlete, dreaming up deep dish because thin-crust pizza seemed too flimsy for a Chicago appetite. It’s a great story. Years of archival digging suggest it’s also missing its actual main character.
Quick answer
Deep-dish pizza was first served at a Chicago restaurant that opened in December 1943 at 29 E. Ohio Street, originally called just “The Pizzeria” and later renamed Pizzeria Uno. Ike Sewell, the man usually credited as its inventor, appears to have had no ownership stake when it opened — making his business partner, Italian-American artist Ric Riccardo, the more likely source of the original recipe, according to research by pizza historian Peter Regas.
A tavern becomes a pizzeria
The building at 29 E. Ohio Street had been a tavern called The Pelican until it closed in late 1942. Records uncovered by independent researcher Peter Regas, who spent roughly twelve years combing property filings, death certificates, and old newspaper archives for his project PizzaHistoryBook.com, show that Ric Riccardo — an Italian-American artist who lived at that address from late 1942 into 1944 — opened The Pizzeria there as its sole owner in December 1943.
Ike Sewell’s name doesn’t show up as an owner at the start. According to Regas’s findings, Sewell became part of the business only after his wife, Florence Sewell, signed a partnership agreement in 1944 — months after the restaurant, and quite possibly the deep-dish recipe itself, already existed. If that timeline holds, the man history remembers as deep dish’s inventor was arguably a founding partner’s spouse’s husband who joined after the fact.
Uno, Due, and a legend that outlived its witnesses
Riccardo died in 1954, just over a decade after the restaurant opened. Sewell lived on, kept running the place, and became its public face for the next 36 years until his own death in 1990 — which meant he was the one left to tell reporters the story, and the one whose version stuck. In 1955, the growing business opened a second location one block north; the original became “Pizzeria Uno” and the new one “Pizzeria Due” (Italian for one and two).
A rival claim names Rudy Malnati Sr., a bartender who became the restaurant’s manager — its third manager, not its first, according to Regas’s research — as the true inventor. A 1956 Chicago Daily News article credited Malnati with the recipe, and his family later built two Chicago pizza institutions, Lou Malnati’s (founded 1971) and Pizano’s (founded 1991), partly on that lore. But there’s no paperwork from the 1940s tying Malnati to the dish’s creation either.
The part most people miss
The deep dish most people eat today — thick, custardy crust, inverted layers, a moat of cheese — probably wasn’t the pizza served on day one. Regas’s research points to Alice Mae Redmond, a cook hired in the mid-to-late 1940s, as a likely figure in thickening and reworking the crust into something closer to the modern version sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, after which she went on to work at Gino’s East, another famous deep-dish name. In other words, the “inventor” question assumes one person made one dish at one moment — when the real story is a restaurant kitchen quietly revising its own recipe for over a decade, with credit eventually settling on whoever was still alive and famous enough to claim it. Even Tim Samuelson, Chicago’s official cultural historian, has said there simply isn’t enough documentation to name a definitive inventor.
Sources
The Culinary Historians of Chicago, presenting Peter Regas’s archival research (PizzaHistoryBook.com) on the ownership history of The Pizzeria/Pizzeria Uno, Ric Riccardo, Ike Sewell, and Alice Mae Redmond.
Food Republic, on the competing claims between Ike Sewell, Ric Riccardo, and Rudy Malnati Sr. for deep dish’s invention.
Wikipedia’s entry on Uno Pizzeria & Grill and on Chicago-style pizza, for restaurant founding dates, the Pizzeria Due split, and Tim Samuelson’s comments as Chicago’s official cultural historian.
Explore more: more true food origin stories.
deep dish pizza FAQs
Did Ike Sewell really invent deep dish pizza?
Probably not alone, and maybe not at all. Archival research suggests Sewell had no ownership stake in the restaurant when it opened in December 1943, joining as a partner only after his wife signed a 1944 agreement — after the restaurant, and likely the recipe, already existed.
What’s the difference between Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due?
They’re sister restaurants a block apart in Chicago. The original opened in 1943; a second location opened in 1955, at which point the original was named “Uno” (one) and the new one “Due” (two).
So who actually invented Chicago deep dish pizza?
No one knows for certain. The strongest documented candidate is Ric Riccardo, the restaurant’s original sole owner, though a manager named Rudy Malnati Sr. and a later cook named Alice Mae Redmond are also credited with developing or reshaping the recipe. Chicago’s own official historian says the paper trail just isn’t there.
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Photo: Олександр Дячук / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
