Stop #2 - Pizza Barra (Oak Brook) 1/24/16

Deep Dish? Thin Crust? Neapolitan?
They have it all.
On our second stop we had a few friends join us which was a lot of fun!  Always good to see Chad, Jen, the boys, and Rob even joined us too!

 First Impressions

When you first walk in it's the smell that captivates you.  The plus side is that if you use open table, you can make a reservation (which we did) and the hostess was very polite.  They weren't very busy but there was enough room to accommodate another larger group next to ours and with plenty of room to spare.

You get to watch the crew making the pizzas which can be entertaining if you have to wait for a table.

For a Sunday during lunch it wasn't too crowded.  The perfect time to go in our opinion.  Service was fine but would like to see what it would be like during Friday or Saturday nights as the biggest gripe in the reviews say that their service is horrible.  We didn't have an issue.

Food

The menu was pretty typical of an Italian restaurant. And if you like Labriola, Pizza Barra has the same owner. 

Our initial impression of looking up pictures online was that it looked like Pequod's caramelized crust with Lou Malnati's chunky tomato sauce in regards to their deep dish pizza.  We had already decided that we wanted to try the deep dish and the thin crust.  We decided to skip the Neapolitan.

The one thing that we noticed is that there was inconsistency with the baking of the deep dish pizzas.  For the whole table, there were 3 deep dish pizzas ordered and 1 thin crust, mostly so that we all had some to take home and because of wanting to try several different kinds.  There was plenty left over for sure!

Chris and I had a deep dish pepperoni and sausage that we shared with Rob and also ordered a thin crust sausage to share with the table.

Total people: 7 (3 on our tab and a to-go pizza)

Total bill: $92 - 3 pizzas, 2 craft beers, & a Coke.

Rhode's Recommendation:  Yes!

As much as the crust looks like it will taste like our favorite caramelized crust, it was close but not as close as we were thinking.  We would definitely make this one of our recommended pizza places.  It will be one to compare to along the way.