Kim's Uncle Pizza
The oven came with the building: a 1954 Faulds, built in Chicago for baking bread, now turning out one size of tavern-style thin crust. The E.F. Pizza crew had never used one before they bought the place.
Why go
Kim Sinclair bought this shop in 1971 and ran it as Uncle Pete's for nearly fifty years, mostly by herself through the pandemic, and the name over the door now is an homage to her.1 Ed Marszewski worked at Uncle Pete's as a teenager and bought it in late 2020 with E.F. Pizza, the Bridgeport crew behind Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream.1 An electrical fire that started in birds' nests in the wall pushed the opening back nearly two years, and they finally opened quietly on 28 July 2022.1 The sandwiches came with the pizza: their own sausage blend, encased by Makowski's Real Sausage Co., which has been going since 1920 near the old Union Stock Yards.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the tavern-style thin crust off the Faulds. It is one size and it is what the shop is for.1
- Order: the sausage sandwich. Cecily Federighi builds it on Turano bread because wrapping it steams the loaf, with roasted green peppers and onions for sweetness and J.P. Graziano giardiniera for heat.1
- Avoid: turning up as a group expecting to sit. There are two tables inside and a picnic table outside.1
What locals & experts say
- Cecily Federighi, co-owner, on the oven (Chicago Tribune, 17 August 2022):
Ours is from 1954. And it’s a beast with a mind of its own, but it’s been really fun to work on that.
1 - Cecily Federighi, on why the crew took a suburban pizzeria:
Half of us needed convincing, and half of us were fully on board. Just the commute was the big thing for us.
1
Good to know
- The oven's company: Federighi names Pat's and Armand's as the other Chicago rooms that prefer a Faulds.1
Verdict
could-visit — A 1954 Faulds oven, built for bread and inherited with the room, is a genuine reason for the crust to be different from the next tavern-style pie, and the owner says plainly that they had never used one before. The sourcing on the sandwiches is named down to the casing and the giardiniera. It sits where it does because the only writing on it is the Tribune's first-look piece from opening week, and nobody has judged the pizza since.