Gino’s East

Great experience. Great authentic Gino’s East deep dish pizza and friendly service. I wish there was one on the south side of Houston. Even though it takes 2hrs to get here, we will be back.

Let’s see I moved to Houston about 12 months ago, from the Southside of Chicago, and needless to say I am always on the hunt for Good Chicago style food. I ran into a couple of resturants with the Chicago name, selling Chicago style food, that were so disgusting, I just wanted to cry! To my Amazzzzeeeeeeeeement, I started a job in the Woodlands, and drove past Genos East! Hey I know that place from back home, except I only ate there once, because I’m more of a Giordanos, Italian Fiesta type of girl. Anyways i thought I bet they must have Italian beefs, and sure enough whoosh they did. But do you know what the most fantastic thing ever was??? They have Authentic giardiniera peppers, the kind soaked in hot pepper oil. Do you know I went to *Windy City resturant* and they sold me an Italian beef with peppers soaked in water. It was an insult! I have went to a million grocery stores looking for authentic peppers only to be disappointed, and having to order them off amazon. I love Texas cajun creole style food, but sometimes you crave home, you know really greasy, heavy street food Chicago is known for! I was pleasantly surprised at this place. Also it’s not authentic Italian beef bread, but the bread is thick, savory, and spongy, and soaks up the au ju sauce, and they also grill red and yellow peppers, that adds a nice touch. I added mozzarella cheese, divine! The peppers were so hot, they made me sneeze, yes just how I like them. Also the fries were really good, very fresh, and thin. To me very reminiscent of Very fresh McDonald’s fries. Anyways I will be back, maybe not for the pizza, because I never really craved their pizza, but for the beef and peppers for sure!

This is good pizza! The long wait is part of the experience. Come with friends and family, slow down and enjoy yourself. Be sure and ask for patty sausage (if you like sausage).

I grew up eating Gino’s Pizza from the original restaurant on Superior Ave in Chicago (which has been there since the late 60’s). It is, in my opinion, the best pizza in the world. The pizza served at the Spring, Texas location is FAR from the original. Gino’s is famous for its thick cornbread crust, which was poorly duplicated at the Texas location. Our crust was dry and burnt. The sauce was runny and the pizza was warm at best. It did not appear that this pizza was actually cooked in the deep dish in which it was served. Overall, very disappointing. If you want great pizza and a truly great experience, you must visit the original in Chicago.

… Best pizza in Houston. Well, I can make better… should try their sauce… it’s all in the sauce

Loved it. Great food. Excellent service. Kid friendly. Yes, I wrote on the wall with a marker. Definitely will be back here. Soon.

Great deep-​dish pizza! Done exactly the way they do it in Chicago and the crust is FINE, I assure you. That’s just how it’s done in Chicago. I got the Caesar salad, which was PHENOMENAL and the Chitalian Stallion Deep Dish pizza and it was EVEN MORE PHENOMENAL. I don’t know what waiter other reviewers had, but my guy was great! (His name is Adam.) Nothing has ever done so great in this location, but this restaurant looks very promising. Don’t know why it only has 2 stars! Great milieu and everything… Would recommend!

For the actual review skip to paragraph 2. Let me just start off by saying all the negative reviews are from ignorant people. Deep dish pizza’s take forty-​five minutes. Order an appetizer or don’t go. It takes forty-​five minutes to an hour. Get over it. It’s a PIE. I also saw people complaining about the sharpie writing on the wall… Really? People are literally just complaining about the essence of Chicago pizza. Let’s review: 45 minutes, pie, sharpie, and sauce on top.
Anyway… Real review:
This place is awesome. Authentic Chicago-​style pizza (I’ve lived there) with a friendly and helpful staff.
Good selection of alcohol. Shiner on tap– as any self-​respecting Texan bar should.
We ordered Pub chips as an appetizer and holy moley were they good, with the perfect crisp. Not to mention they use Sweet Baby Ray’s as the base for their barbecue sauce. Can’t go wrong there.
We ordered a small deep dish which is PLENTY for two people if you order an appetizer and oh my God. Instant flash-​back to chi town. Amazing sauce, perfect amount of cheese and one of the only pizza crusts I’ll actually eat.
Thank you Gino’s for making your way down to Texas.
TL;DR: Gino’s East is here, it’s awesome, go there, don’t be ignorant about your expectations!
Allison’s the best!!!

This place is awesome! When walking in the place just looks really warm and welcoming. A place where u could sit and have a couple of drink. The staff was also very friendly. Our server Allison was GREAT! She gave great suggestions and continued checking on us while we waited for our deep dish. (which does take about 45 minutes).
I had an Italian margarita so delicious. Got me feeling warm.
When our Pizza finally came out we were not disappointed.
The crust is my favorite. Very buttery and flaky, the sauce was great too. We ordered a Small and it was enough for two !!

We had a party of 12 on a Friday night. Our wait time was about 5 min-​we were seated at a large booth that accommodated all of us! The server came out and quickly took our drink and appetizer order. Appetizers were out, drinks too. Pizzas and deep dish ordered-​we were told the deep dish would talk a little bit longer. The 2 large pizzas came out with salads and then the deep dish pizzas! Oh my! Worth the wait! Our server was on the spot and didn’t miss a beat. We were offered free desserts and complimented on the 8 kids in the group! We definitely will return!

Sorry to see all the bad reviews. It appears the wait service could use a lot of work. But this review is about THE FOOD, which is awesome. Gino’s was the ‘go-​to’ place of my late Nana in Chicago and the quality of the ones here in Houston are just as good. Do yourself a favor and order one of the «patty-​style» sausage choices like The Chicago Fire. Do yourself another favor and order Take Out, keeping in mind you need to call 45 – 60 minutes in advance. Pick it up on your way home from work and give it an oven reheat when it’s time to eat.
Please don’t bother if you don’t love sauce and lots of it. Please don’t bother if being full after 1 – 2 slices of pizza is a problem — this is some dense food. This is real deal CDDP and it may not be for everyone, but I love it and this is the best version I’ve ever had!

If your from Chicago and you know about deep dish then this is the place for you. The pizza is exactly the same. Make sure you ask for the sausage patty on the deep dish and not the crumbled sausage (trust me). The cheese sticks are the best I ever had. If you can also try the Italian beef sandwich dipped and throw on the pickled peppers. There is no taste quite like it!

I am a little shocked by the mixed reviews. I am a born and raised Chicagoan, and Gino’s East was my ultimate treat meal throughout my childhood. Lou Malnati’s and Giordano’s are some of the other Chicago aficionados to come close; but Gino’s East takes the cake for me due to the amazing cornmeal buttery crust. To this very day, every time I fly home to Chicago to visit family, the first stop I make stepping off of the plane is to the Gino’s East on Superior Street on the Magnificent Mile. My heart went pitter-​patter when I heard a location was opening here in Houston, a slice of my childhood! I had to go as soon as it opened… I wanted to make sure it was the real deal and not some copy-​cat imitation.
If you are a thin-​crust person, Gino’s East is NOT for you. If you like dainty toppings, Gino’s East is NOT for you. Gino’s East is not going to serve you a few delicate crumbles of sausage if you ask for a sausage pie… they are going to give you a gigantic high-​quality hockey-​puck sausage PATTY that spans the length and width of your entire pizza. If you are on a diet, then for goodness sake this place is NOT for you. If the idea of eating your pizza with a knife and fork is off-​putting because the pizza is too tall, too cheesy etc, then Gino’s East is NOT for you.
Gino’s East IS for you if you would like a heart-​attack on plate served to you with love, wrapped up in over a pound of cheese, a pound of sauce, and an abundance of serious toppings. Yes, you will need a knife and fork. Yes, you will need 45 minutes for this pizza pie to cook… as with anything… perfection takes time. I dare you to eat more than one slice without feeling like you consumed a Thanksgiving Day meal. (Yes, we Chicagoans are this serious about our pizza). My personal favorite is the Chicago Fire pizza… sausage with loads of peppers.
I rarely go to the North side of Houston since I have everything here in the Galleria area. However I have been to this location numerous times, it is worth the mileage, and it is the real deal. I see from another reviewer that the graffiti came down recently? Dear management, please put the graffiti back up. It is part of the true Gino’s East experience and grit of Chicago. We like it like that ;-) xoxo

Unilocal reviews have been mixed, to say the least, since Gino’s opened. I finally decided to give them a try for myself and had my birthday dinner there on a Sunday afternoon.
First impressions are great! I love the big booths. I sat in the middle of the giant table, looking out over the restaurant like a mafia don surveying his domain. I loved it. Our waiter was fantastic as well. We took his advice and ordered our deep dish pizzas as soon as we sat down; he let us know they take 45 minutes in the oven, etc, but I already knew that would be part of the deal here.
To tide everyone over, we ordered a bunch of appetizers. They were just OK. We got the fried calamari, which was a bit underdone and underseasoned. The hot marinara served with it, though, was incredible. That made up for it. We also got a house salad, which — I mean, it’s a salad. It was fine. Crispy Brussels sprouts with pancetta are the thing to get. Those were the best of the bunch, with nicely roasted Brussels sprouts offsetting thick cubes of pancetta, the Italian bacon. I ate more than my fair share of those.
But, now to the star of the show: the pizza. I know that calling it «pizza» really sets some folks off. New Yorkers deride Chicago-​style deep dish with a fiery disdain that I’ve only previously seen given off by Texans toward people who put beans in their chili. Yeah, it’s that serious.
Get past the name, though, because this stuff is delicious. Starting at the top, you’re greeted with a heavy layer of a bright, fresh-​tasting tomato sauce. I’d have liked more herbs in the sauce, but it did have a nice, pure tomato flavor. The pie I dug into first was the Gino’s Supreme. Underneath the tomato sauce was a perfect sweet Italian sausage, cut into chunks big enough that you had something to sink your teeth into and enjoy the texture as well as the flavor. It was surrounded by green peppers, onions, and mushrooms. The green peppers and onions granted a nice vegetal contrast, but the mushrooms got lost. Below the meat and vegetables was a serious layer of melted mozzarella. We’re talking ¼″ thick. It was heaven. There’s no such thing as too much cheese, and this was the good stuff — real, whole milk mozzarella, not something chemically engineered to melt a certain way. And then, somehow, the cornmeal-​infused crust holding all this up managed to be both sturdy and crispy. How it was still crispy with all that stuff on top is one of those kitchen miracles. I didn’t even try our Meaty Legend, because I had to have another slice of the supreme, and then I was done. Stuffed. Sated. Satisfied.
Given the investment in time and calories, I can’t say I’ll be a regular, but I’ll definitely be back from time to time. Gino’s is best appreciated with a group, and it was also a great place to keep an eye on the game while we ate.

It wasn’t busy when we went got served right away sat at the bar. Customer service nothing over the top your basic greet & take order. We were advised of the wait time due to the pizza being a deep dish.
We ordered little sliders as app the pickled cucumbers were yummy.
Pizza was good we got the Meat one *forgot the name* it was good loved the buttery crust and it was cheesy. It was yummy.
Overall: would order again but to go; as the vibe of the location is nothing to enjoy was cold too.

I thought the flavor and quality was fantastic, but I won’t be extremely inclined to return because A) it is really expensive pizza and B) it was too heavy for me. But I didn’t let that deter my stars because if you’re craving authentic Chicago deep dish, this is your stop.

Are the workers pretending to have an «Italian» accent for environment feel?
Is this what a deep dish taste like? If it is, I am not impressed. So glad I didn’t waste my time in Chicago when I wasn’t eating meat or dairy.
At least the employees were friendly.

I went in the middle of the week and had no issues with finding a table. The walls were covered in Sharpie graffiti. From the reviews, I expected the pizza to take a while, so we ordered an appetizer platter, which had mozzarella sticks, calamari, bruschetta and spinach artichoke dip. The breading was kind of thick, which is fine for the mozzarella, but not my favorite for the calamari. We ordered the small Spinach Margherita Deep Dish pizza. The crust was thick and cornmeal like and is what differentiates this place from other pizza places. The pizza had spinach, tomatoes and mozzarella and was drenched with pizza sauce. Pizza was good, but I couldn’t finish my slice since it was so thick.
Service could have been better. We were seated by the kitchen, so in a high traffic area. Our waiter was friendly, but it took a while to order. Other staff members did try to assist us and the manager walked around and asked how things were.
Overall, it was good to experience, but I don’t think it’s a place I would care to eat at often since it’s kind of pricy, takes a while to cook and high in fat and calories.

First timers at this fairly new pizza place.
The prices raised my expectation immediately.
We ordered the thin crust– meat pie while we waited for the deep dish Margharita pie. Unfortunately, neither one made an impression on us. The meat one had lots of bacon and not much of the other meats. The Margharita used the same tomato sauce. The sauce they use is different and may require that you acquire a taste for it, which I don’t care to do. Especially not at those prices. $ 57.80 (with tip) for a small and medium and two sodas.
We won’t be coming back.

Why is this new Chicago based pizza place getting low review? Simple, the wait is simply too long!!! After coming in at 8pm on a friday night, enduring the 45 min wait to get seated (party of 2), then enduring another 45 min wait to get the deep dish pizza brought to the table… we were finally able to eat. We ordered the supreme and substituted mushrooms on one side for bacon.
When the pizza arrived, we were of course starving but it was a good pizza that Houston for the most part is not used to. This deep dish contains a large amount of tomato sauce on top. So much that it overpowers many of the ingredients. After not tasting or seeing any bacon on one side of the pie, I notified our server and the manager was called out to the table. She claimed that the bacon was indeed mixed inside the tomato sauce but very well chopped into small pieces. What? Yes, they claim that their breakfast bacon is chopped and small. Whatever the size of it, that still didn’t explain why I couldn’t find or taste it either. I requested a side of bacon and the manger gladly brought it out. Regardless, they should have made the pizza right in the first place.
As one of the only plus I experienced, we ordered 2 draft beers from the bar when we first arrived and they were only about $ 4 each, which was a good price.
Will I ever come back, hmm, probably not. I think I’ll stick to Grimaldi’s a little further up the road instead.