Related: The Best Pizza in Town

I feel the need to come clean. When we started discussing our favorite pizza places for this ranking, a certain spot popped into mind. By no means would I call it one of the best, but it is the one place where I’m a regular, and where I eat more pizza than anywhere else. Its name? Sigh. Whole Foods Market.

I’m going to pause for a moment to let you pelt me with rotten tomatoes before I continue. Are we good? 

Pizza is a food worth obsessing over — which we do quite handily in these pages — but it is also the most utilitarian of meals. Many days all I want for lunch is one enormous, inexpensive, not-too-greasy slice that I can fold and aimlessly shove into my maw. In New York, that pizza exists on nearly every block. In Chicago, not so much. This is a terrible slice town. 

So I go to Whole Foods and pay $3.99 for satisfaction, not excitement. Perhaps even comfort: It’s the warm hug I crave after my weekly therapy session. Though the crust tastes like less than nothing, it has a nice chew. The pepperoni may be super weird, but the mushroom and caramelized onion number hits the spot, particularly when I dress it with a little tabbouleh from the salad bar. And if your piece looks long in the tooth, you can ask the staff to pop it in the oven for a reheat. It’ll come out ready for you to sink your teeth into that cheese, to feel the stretch, pull, and snap that tells your brain you’re eating pizza and all is good with the world.