The Best Pizza in the Southwest Suburbs (and Why Almost All of It Is Tavern Style)

by Brian Wittman

Ask somebody out here where to get pizza and you will get a fast answer, a specific one, and no hesitation at all. Ask two people and you will get an argument.

What you will almost never get is a debate about style, and that surprises people who move here from somewhere else. They arrive expecting Chicago to mean deep dish, they ask around, and everybody keeps sending them to a small storefront that has been open since before they were born and serves a cracker-thin pizza cut into squares. That is not people being contrarian. That is just what pizza is here.

So this list is organized the way the region actually works, not the way the postcard says it does.

What is the best pizza in the southwest suburbs?

The honest answer is that the southwest suburbs are tavern country, and the best pizza out here is almost always a thin crust cut into squares from a family place that has been in the same spot for decades. Papa Joe's in Orland Park and Lockport, Pizza Pete in Orland Park and Frankfort, Ed and Joe's in Tinley Park, Fox's in Orland Park and Mokena, and Italian Villa in Orland Park are the names that come up over and over. If you want deep dish or stuffed from a local operator rather than a chain, the two to know are Joe's Italian Villa in Palos Heights, which has been making pizza since 1947, and Palermo's 95th in Oak Lawn, open since 1961.

What is tavern style pizza, and why is it everywhere here?

Tavern style is thin, crisp all the way to the edge, and cut into squares instead of wedges. Around here it is not a variety on the menu. It is the default, and it is what people mean when they say thin crust without qualifying it further.

The best evidence is the menus themselves. Papa Joe's calls its pizza tavern style thin crust outright. Italian Villa lists Chicago Style and Tavern Style side by side. Fox's calls its version legendary thin crust. Tony's in Beecher says authentic thin crust. Nobody out here is explaining the concept to you, because the assumption is that you already know.

One practical note before the list. A tavern pizza is built to be shared standing up, which is why so many of these places are attached to a bar, and why the square in the middle is the one everybody fights over. If you are ordering for a table of people who have never had it, get more than you think you need. The slices are small on purpose.

Where is the best tavern style pizza in the southwest suburbs?

Organized by area, closest ring out, so you can find your own town fast.

Best Pizza in Orland Park: The Deepest Bench in the Region

Four places, all independently owned, all decades old. If you are weighing a move to Orland Park, this is one of the perks nobody puts in a listing.

Papa Joe's has been run by the Lorenzo family since 1982 and is one of the few in the region whose own menu says tavern style thin crust in those words. There is a second location in Lockport on East 9th Street, which makes it the pick for anyone on that side of the county too. Lockport is worth the drive for the trip itself if you have not been: the State Street district is one of the few genuinely walkable old downtowns out here, and the I and M Canal Trail runs right through town.

Italian Villa is the oldest story on the Orland list. The family opened on West 63rd Street in Chicago in 1977, moved to Pulaski, and landed at 144th Place in Orland Park in August 1988. Their own site describes more than forty five years of family operation. Worth knowing if you are trying to keep the Italian Villas straight, because there is another one further west in this article with a different family and a different story.

Pizza Pete traces to 1967, and the current chapter is the interesting one. The Skopick family bought the Orland Park store in 2020 and opened the Frankfort location on Harlem Avenue in January 2021. Their site introduces manager Danielle Skopick, who has cerebral palsy, and runs a Tuesday program they call Pizza with a Purpose that gives twenty five percent of the day's sales to a disability organization. That is on their own page, in their own words, and it is a good reason to make Tuesday the day you order there.

Fox's opened on 143rd Street in 1973. The Mokena location, branded Fox's on Wolf, followed in 2006 on 187th Street. It is the closest thing on this list to a true pub pizza, which is exactly the point of the style.

Best Pizza in Tinley Park: The Elder Statesman

Ed and Joe's on Oak Park Avenue has been a fixture since the early 1960s and still closes on Mondays, which tells you roughly everything about how it is run. Their own site references a sixtieth anniversary, though it does not print a founding year in plain text, so I am calling it early sixties rather than picking a date I cannot show you.

Best Pizza in Frankfort: Two Places, Two Different Jobs

Aurelio's on Lincoln Highway is the franchise of the Homewood original that started in 1959, and it is the name most likely to already be in your head. It is tavern style like everything else on this list, but the cheese on top is not the same as what everybody else is using, and that difference is most of the reason people either swear by it or shrug at it. Tony's Villa Rosa on St. Francis Road has been family owned since 1974, does thin and deep dish both, and has a drive-thru, which is a genuinely underrated feature on a weeknight with kids in the back seat. Anybody eyeing Frankfort will work that out in the first month.

Best Pizza in Homer Glen and New Lenox: The Two They Share

Pizza Mia has been going since 1991 and runs locations on Bell Road in Homer Glen and Laraway Road in New Lenox. Chesdan's is also on Bell Road in Homer Glen and is known for the thin crust and the Italian side of the menu. Two independents that have both lasted on the same road in a town that only incorporated in 2001 says something about how fast Homer Glen filled in.

Best Pizza in Beecher: Punching Above Its Size

Tony's Pizza on Dixie Highway has been the Adducci family's since 1984. If you are out that way, this is the one. There is a separate and unrelated looking Tony's in Peotone, and neither one's website mentions the other, so do not assume they are the same people.

Best Pizza in Joliet: The Best Origin Story on the List

Cemeno's was opened by Joseph and Janice Cemeno on July 19, 1976, as the first franchise Aurelio's ever sold outside its own family. They went independent in 2002 and are marking fifty years in 2026. A place that spent twenty six years as somebody else's franchise and then spent another twenty four proving it did not need to be is a very specific kind of confidence.

Who does deep dish and stuffed pizza around here?

Honestly, fewer local operators than you would expect. Deep dish and stuffed are the styles the big regional chains own, and there are plenty of those out here if a chain is what you want. Local independents doing it well are rarer, and there are two worth going out of your way for.

Joe's Italian Villa in Palos Heights is the deepest history on this page. Their own site traces the first pizza to 1947 at 63rd and Stewart in Chicago, then Bridgeview in 1968, then the move out to the current spot on Harlem Avenue sometime in the 2010s. They make thin, deep dish, and stuffed, which almost nobody on this list does. For anyone considering a move to Palos Heights, a seventy nine year old restaurant on the main road tells you something the median price does not. Note that this one changed hands in February 2026, when Frank Serio retired after more than forty five years and sold to Melissa Martin, who told the local paper she was not changing anything. Same pizza, same Italian food, in her words. Their website still tells the story as the Serio family's, so if you read it and get confused, that is why.

Palermo's 95th in Oak Lawn has been open since 1961 and lists Chicago deep dish and thin and crispy as its two lanes. It is the other genuinely long-running local operator doing the deep style.

And Palermo's of 63rd in Frankfort does deep dish, thin, and stuffed, which brings us to the thing everybody in the area has an opinion about.

Which Palermo's is the original?

Nobody agrees, and I could not settle it either.

Here is what the restaurants themselves publish. Palermo's of 63rd says it opened in 1961 on 63rd Street in Chicago, started by Antonino and Carmela Caldarone and their four children, and that the Frankfort location opened in May 2006 run by two of those children and a grandson. Palermo's 159 in Orland Hills says it started in 1961 as a pizza shop on 63rd Street, run by a first generation Sicilian family. Palermo's 95th in Oak Lawn says it has been going since 1961.

Three restaurants, three 1961 claims, two of them naming the same street. None of the three websites mentions either of the others.

I am not going to tell you what that means, because I do not know. It could be one family that split, it could be a common Sicilian name attached to a common Chicago style, and both explanations produce exactly what you can go read for yourself. What I can tell you is that the Frankfort location is the one with a documented sibling in the city, on its own site, in writing. If you want the version with the clearest paper trail, that is it. If somebody tells you with total confidence which one is the real one, enjoy the story and order the pizza.

Is there anywhere doing something completely different?

One, and it is worth the drive if you want a break from the format.

Wooden Paddle on Stephen Street in downtown Lemont is wood fired, which is a genuinely different animal from everything else on this page. Jonathan and Brianna Cowan started it in 2013 and there is a second location in La Grange. This is not a better or worse call, it is a different meal. If you have had square cut thin crust four weekends running and want something that tastes like it came out of somebody's backyard oven in Naples, go here.

It is not a coincidence that the one place breaking the format is in Lemont. Lemont is the odd town in this part of the region, in the way that people who live there tend to like. It has an actual walkable old downtown built into a bluff over the canal rather than a strip along an arterial, so Stephen Street is a place you park once and walk, which is rare out here and is the thing transplants from the city miss most. The Cal Sag Trail ends at its western terminus there and the I and M Canal runs through, so the outdoor access is unusually good for a town that small. Pollyanna Brewing is a few minutes away.

If you are house hunting in the southwest suburbs and everything is starting to look like the same subdivision with a different sign out front, Lemont is the one to drive on a Saturday. It is a genuinely different product, and whether it is the right one for you comes down to a real trade: do you want to walk somewhere on a Friday night, or would you rather have the yard.

What does any of this have to do with real estate?

More than you would think, and this is the part I actually pay attention to.

A pizza place that has been in the same storefront since 1961, or 1973, or 1982, is telling you something a listing sheet cannot. It means enough families within a few miles have eaten there every few weeks, for decades, to keep a small business alive through four or five recessions. That is a stability signal, and it sits alongside the harder numbers in how I rate these towns when somebody asks whether a neighborhood is going to hold its value over the next five to ten years. Housing stock and school districts get all the attention. The independent restaurants that survived are quietly telling you the same story from a different direction, and the same pattern runs straight through the best burgers in the southwest suburbs too.

It is also just a good way to figure out whether you would actually like living somewhere. Drive the town on a Friday night and see whether anybody is out.

Towns I checked that did not make the list

I looked for a standout independent in Manhattan, Palos Park, Peotone, Monee, Channahon, Minooka, and Manteno, and could not verify one that belonged on this list. That is not a knock on any of those towns, it just means I did not find it. Some of them have perfectly good pizza that simply does not have the decades-long institution story this piece is built around.

If you know one I missed, tell me and I will go look. These lists get better when people who actually live there correct them.

The Bottom Line

If you are new here and want to understand the region in one meal, order a tavern style thin crust from a place with a family name on the sign and eat it out of the box on the counter. That is the food this area actually runs on.

The deep dish is real but it is mostly chain territory, with Joe's Italian Villa and Palermo's 95th as the local exceptions. The wood fired outlier in Lemont is a genuinely different night out. And the Palermo's question is unanswerable, which is honestly the most Chicago thing on this page.

Everything here was checked against each restaurant's own website in September 2026. Restaurants change, so if something has moved or closed by the time you read this, tell me and I will fix it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is tavern style pizza?

Tavern style is a thin, crisp pizza cut into squares rather than wedges. It is the dominant style in the Chicago area and especially in the south and southwest suburbs, where it is usually just called thin crust without further explanation.

Why is the pizza cut into squares instead of slices?

The square cut comes out of the bar tradition the style is named for, where pizza was something you shared standing up with a drink rather than sat down to eat. Small squares are easier to pass around and easier to eat one handed, and the style stuck long after the bars did.

Is deep dish pizza actually popular in the suburbs?

Less than out-of-towners expect. Deep dish and stuffed are widely available, mostly through the large regional chains, but the neighborhood institutions in the southwest suburbs are overwhelmingly thin crust. Locally owned deep dish is the exception rather than the rule.

What is the oldest pizza place in the southwest suburbs?

Of the places in this article, Joe's Italian Villa in Palos Heights traces the furthest back, with its own site dating the first pizza to 1947 in Chicago before two moves brought it to Harlem Avenue. Ed and Joe's in Tinley Park and both Palermo's date to the early 1960s.

Which pizza places out here are family owned rather than chains?

Most of them. Papa Joe's has been the Lorenzo family's since 1982, Tony's in Beecher the Adducci family's since 1984, Italian Villa's family has run it since 1977, Cemeno's was started by Joseph and Janice Cemeno in 1976, and Palermo's of 63rd was opened by the Caldarone family in 1961.

Is there anywhere with wood fired or Neapolitan style pizza nearby?

Wooden Paddle in downtown Lemont is the clearest example, opened in 2013 and running a second location in La Grange. Round-cut thin crust and Neapolitan style are both genuinely scarce in this part of the region.

How often is this list updated?

Restaurant lists go stale faster than anything else on this site, so this one gets re-checked more often than the rest. Every place here had its current hours and operating status confirmed on its own website before publication, and the list gets a fresh pass on a regular cycle.

Brian Wittman is a licensed real estate broker (Real Broker LLC), mortgage loan originator (NMLS #2646598, NEXA Mortgage, LLC, Equal Housing Lender), and life insurance producer (Levinson & Associates). This article is for educational purposes only and is not financial, lending, tax, or legal advice, an offer, or a commitment to lend; all loans are subject to credit approval. Information is accurate as of the publication date; for current details and full disclosures, visit https://bluejeanbroker.com/disclosures.