A Museum Devoted To Pizza Is Coming To Chicago Next Month

By Anthony Todd in Food on Mar 29, 2016 3:49PM

Fasanos. Photo by Jennifer Olvera/Chicagoist.

Updated March 31: You can now see the museum without a ticket.

Chicago is a city that cares about pizza, so it's only logical that Chicago would be the perfect place for an entire museum devoted to our favorite food. Accordingly, The U.S. Pizza Museum will debut it's first real physical exhibit on April 3.

The "museum" has existed in online form up to this point, displaying various pieces of pizza history and memorabilia, including menus, signs, dishes and even a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizza party comic book. At Chop Shop, on April 3, the museum moves into the physical realm, at least for a day. This coincides with the Chicago Pizza Summit, which we covered back in February.

The second floor of Chop Shop will be filled with awesome memorabilia, including:

Vintage pizza advertisements, toys, buttons, and records from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s will be displayed alongside more recent artifacts like pizza boxes and menus, including selections from local institutions like Lou Malnati’s and the recently closed Burt’s Place.

Unfortunately, tickets for the summit are currently sold out. But there's still a couple ways you might get into the Pizza Summit. First, sign up for a newsletter to be the first to find out if more tickets will be released. Next, check out all the rest of the 30 Days of Pizza Events. Every time you RSVP for one (and there are five free events left between now and the summit), you are entered for a chance to win two tickets for the Summit.

If we were more devious, we'd suggest you call Chop Shop and beg them to keep the exhibit around for a few weeks, but that would be wrong, so we won't. In the meantime, check out the museum's website.