When your job is to constantly hunt for new restaurants, few things are as thrilling as coming across an intriguing new concept with a bashful name. (Remember Chicago Secret Burger, whose owner we still don’t know?)
So when I noticed a new pizzeria called Shy Slice with approximately zero details about the owner online, I needed to learn more.
What also caught my eye was the format. Shy Slice serves square-cut, tavern-style pizza, and although you can get whole pizzas, you can also order it by the slice. Fortunately, you aren’t paying for each individual square (an especially complicated proposition considering those edge pieces are smaller than middle ones). Instead, you get a quarter of an 18-inch pizza.
I easily tracked down its address (3109 W. Irving Park Road), which turned out to be the same as an Irving Park neighborhood restaurant called Patino’s Grill. But I could tell by the photos that the pizzas looked different from Patino’s, with Shy Slice’s version dramatically thinner.
Turns out, Shy Slice wasn’t trying to be overly coy. Owner Nicholas Mello thought of the name more as a play on Chi, as in Chicago. He grew up in the southwest suburbs eating tavern-style pizza at places like Michael’s Pizza and Jimano’s Pizzeria. As a teenager, he even worked at Jimano’s for a while. He then headed west, first attending college in Utah before spending a few years in Las Vegas.
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He had always been interested in making pizza, and when he moved back to Illinois, he started looking for space. “I came across this Facebook Marketplace listing for kitchen space at Patino’s Grill,” Mello said. “I realized I could set up a virtual kitchen and start selling pizza quickly.”
Though setup was easy, he said business was tough at first. “I had a Friday night without a single sale,” he said. Fortunately, traffic has picked up, and he’s hoping to hire more help eventually.
Mello said selling quarter sections of pizza was always part of his business plan. “I’d never seen that,” he said. “It was just an idea. I knew that if I wanted to be in the pizza business, I had to do something original.” He thinks it’s a great size for an individual, though it also allows multiple people to order exactly the kind of pizza topping they want.
As for the crust, it kept getting thinner the more he tested. “I played with different dough weights, and I always wanted it to go thinner,” Mello said.
Currently, Shy Slice is available only for pickup or delivery, but considering it launched May 1, I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear more from Mello soon.
Shy Slice, 3109 W. Irving Park Road, 815-409-5165, shyslicepizza.dine.online
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