Zarella Pizzeria & Taverna

Zarella looks like a bet-hedging concept on paper — pizza and a giant bar in River North, wallpaper and house lamps, TVs running the Blackhawks — and bet-hedging concepts are usually where good pizza goes to die. This one doesn't. The kitchen runs two styles, tavern and a thin, puffy-edged artisan version, and both hold a tangy crust with real structural integrity under toppings that would collapse a lesser dough.

The tavern pies are the reason to come back. The pepperoni does exactly what it should, but the carbonara pizza is the flex, a topping load heavy enough to soak most crusts into mush that somehow stays crisp anyway. That's a kitchen that solved a specific technical problem without making a show of it.

The room plays loose, built for volume and easy nights, and some of that ease shows up in pricing that runs higher than the vibe promises. It's a fair gripe, not a disqualifying one. Chicago Magazine's John Kessler put it on the city's list for 2026, and the pizza backs up the placement. This is a neighborhood pizza bar with a kitchen taking itself seriously where it counts.