Italian Fiesta Pizzeria, the legendary fourth-generation-owned South Side business, still makes a great Chicago-style thin cracker crust and their own fantastic fennel sausage, but a superb secret menu jerk chicken pizza has become a surprising star.
Keith Lee, the popular TikTok food critic, posted a video showing his tasting of an Italian Fiesta half jerk chicken and half sausage pizza on the last Sunday in August. He went to the Hyde Park location, perhaps best known for their former neighborhood regulars, Barack and Michelle Obama
More Top Picks Best Polarized Sunglasses For Light Sensitivity
.“As soon as our doors opened, it was just nonstop at pretty much all of our locations all day,” said Christine Mikulec, whose great-grandparents Connie and Phillip DeCarlo founded the business in the 1940s. “The whole week was insane, but that Monday was probably the busiest.”
Her great-grandparents Connie and Phillip DeCarlo founded the business in the 1940s. Mikulec now co-owns the business, which has five locations in the city and south suburbs, with her brother Steven Harris, sister Megan Johnson and their cousins, Chris King and Jessica Suva.
The stellar spicy jerk chicken pizza, available whole and by the slice, comes smothered with melted mozzarella over tender chunks of white meat on a crackling canvas painted with the defining dark sauce.
Harris, who’s a hands-on co-owner and general manager, said the sauce comes from Jerk Villa. The Jamaican restaurant was founded not far from the flagship Italian Fiesta that I visited on 71st Street in South Shore.
“We cook our own chicken in our spices for a couple hours,” he said. “Let that cool, then chop that up.”
The oven-braised chicken becomes impressively infused with flavor while staying succulent, often a challenge with boneless breast meat.
“We use the jerk sauce as the base,” he added. That’s instead of their red pizza sauce. “Then we put the chicken on top, and just mozzarella cheese and the oregano garnish.”
You can add toppings too like any old-school Chicago pizza place. But jerk chicken is still not officially on the menu, even a year and a half after it first came to be when an Italian Fiesta cook brought in Jerk Villa sauce for her own chicken.
The long and quiet trial period was going well — before Keith Lee. After Keith Lee, they went through 150 to 200 gallons of jerk sauce in three weeks, then ran out for two weeks.
Now stocked with a fresh supply, everything should be in a constant flow, said Harris. And they’re hoping to get jerk chicken on the menu by the end of the year.
The sublime sausage pizza, however, remains their bestseller. Substantial yet delicate on that signature crisp crust, it is an exceptional example of what we consider classic pizza in Chicago. And they make their own sensational sausage, unusual for pizzerias around the city, where we have historic sausage makers.
“We use pork butt,” said Harris. “Then debone it, and put it through the grinder, then mix our seasonings in.”
They deliver 100-pound fennel-fragrant tubs from their main commissary kitchen at 71st Street by refrigerated truck to the other locations. And they use their great-grandparents’ recipe for the sausage. The sauce, which has a lovely brightness and depth, has its own unusual recipe.
“We actually do not cook it,” said Harris.
Many sauces call for aggressive cooking times. Their sauce is just tomato puree, secret spices and water.
And then there’s the crust. I grew up back in the day when at most pizza places, you could barely tell the difference between the box and the crust. But the thin yet flavorful cracker crust at Italian Fiesta holds more family secrets.
“It’s mostly our flour; we use a specific brand for us,” said Harris. “Then milk, butter and of course a couple of other ingredients that I’m going to leave out.”
The milk and butter make it more like a paper-thin pastry. Dough balls rest only about an hour to rise before they’re rolled. For a relatively short turnaround time, the crust crunches with complexity.
More Top Picks Best Blue Light Reading Glasses
That’s how it’s been done since the beginning, said Patti Tubbs. The former owner “handed the business over to the kids” before retiring in 2024.
Her grandparents emigrated separately from Sicily, met and married in Michigan, moved to Chicago and opened the first Italian Fiesta, where they made pizzas at 67th Street and Dorchester Avenue in 1944, according to Tubbs.
Her father, Frank DeCarlo, eventually took over the business, made pizzas and met her mother, Joan, who was a server at the original pizzeria.
“When we first opened, it was an eat-in,” said Tubbs. All locations are now takeout only. “Then he sadly passed away in 1993, and left me in charge with my two sisters.”
They’ve used whole milk mozzarella since the beginning, she said.I’ve found that’s what makes a big difference for one of the most important taste tests of Chicago-style pizza: how does it taste cold the next day. The cheese remains recognizable as full and fatty mozzarella, unlike how low- or no-fat cheese congeals.
The whole pizzas are the thing to get, but I love the half and half toppings. I highly recommend pairing just cheese, burnished brown, with plump pink shrimp and aromatic garlic. Or try half turkey sausage, nearly identical to its porcine cousin, with half hot giardiniera, from the historic E. Formella. And half jerk chicken meets its tropical match with half jalapeño and pineapple.
The sizable triangular slices are available in 10 toppings from sausage to veggie and, yes, jerk chicken. The crust is the same, and stays crispy on the edge, but softens considerably as they’re cut, boxed and held for quick service. They’re still tasty, and only sold from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Italian beef and sausage combo sandwich, made with house-made beef and the same sausage, was very generously meaty, but the meat was a touch dry even with mozzarella and silky sweet peppers. And I had to get the baked mostaccioli, the traditional Chicago-style pasta introduced to every child at family parties, also generous with the meaty sauce, but the tubular noodles were just too soft, even shrouded in a blanket of cheese.
The fried catfish dinner with soft spaghetti made more sense, with the cornmeal crust adding contrasting texture along with the buttery house-made garlic bread. And packaged carefully as a meal in a cake box made it feel special too, especially when accompanied by a cold and fizzy ginger ale.
There’s a window ledge inside, but the waiting area can get crowded. I wish there was a bit more care and comfort reflected in the space as there is with the food.
Eat in your car immediately if you can. There’s a four-space parking lot that’s chaotic, as is street parking with the many third-party delivery drivers.
A lot has changed since the pizzeria first opened, but not so much the pizza. But I always wondered, where did the name Italian Fiesta come from?
“We have no idea,” said Patti Tubbs. “That’s something that my grandfather came up with. The Italians want to have a party, I guess.”
Italian Fiesta Pizzeria
1919 E. 71st St.
773-684-2222
Open: Daily from 11 a.m., Sunday to Thursday until 1 a.m., Friday and Saturday until 2 a.m.
Prices: $27.75 (sausage pizza, large), $29.75 ( jerk chicken pizza, large), $24.65 (shrimp and garlic pizza, medium), $3.75 (jerk chicken slice), $9.75 (catfish dinner), $1 (ginger ale)
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible, takeout only, no public restrooms
Tribune rating: Very good, two of four stars
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; zero stars, unsatisfactory.
More Top Picks Best Amazon Prime Day Smart Home Deals 2026
Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.