Best Pizza In Joliet? Maurie's Table Adds Chicago Style Pizza To Menu

JOLIET — Known by its motto as "The City of Champions," Joliet is the proud home to several exceptional pizza establishments, and Maurie's Table is not like the rest.

Just up the street from the Saint Joseph Medical Center hospital campus, Maurie's Table is widely known from as far away as Chicago to Dwight for its delicious thin crust, deep dish, its thin/deep and now, its Chicago-style pizza.

Joliet's dimly lit pizza and pub with its iconic hardwood booths is located at 2360 Glenwood Ave. Maurie's has been going strong since 1973.

"Family friendly and old school, that's why we keep it the way it is," explained Mike Likar, who runs Maurie's Table along with his sister, Dawn Bennett.

"We're not a bar," Bennett said. "We're a restaurant with a small bar."

Iconic Wooden Booths In Maurie's Table

During the next couple of months, guests of Maurie's Table might notice a slightly different look around the bar area.

The managers aim to expand their bar area, doubling the number of bar stools. The changes will not alter the character of the dining room.

"We want it to stay this way," Likar pointed out.

As for the legendary hardwood booths — there are nine of them — "these are not leaving," Likar insisted.

There are longtime customers now in their 50s who can recall exactly where they carved their names inside the wooden booths, sometimes during a first romantic date, as teenagers.

And in a day and age when national pizza chains including Pizza Hut are discontinuing or scaling back large dining rooms, Maurie's Table continues to buck that trend.

While Maurie's Table does its fair share of takeout orders, most people come to 2310 Glenwood Ave. for the nostalgia and sit-down dining experience.

Oven Dates Back To 1972

And talk about old school.

The fire-breathing oven inside Maurie's Table kitchen has continued to churned out pizzas for more than half a century, even before Maurie's Table existed.

The restaurant originally opened in the late 1960s as E.B.O. Inferno. When Maurie Sauer became the owner in 1973, he renamed the place Maurie's Table, and people throughout the Joliet area have known it as Maurie's Table for 51 years and counting now.

"That oven got put in, in 1972," Likar explained. "It's a baker's oven."

The baker's oven can rotate about 30 thin crust pizzas and as many as 60 deep dish pizzas.

For historical perspective, Maurie's Table has been in business longer than another Joliet pizza institution, Cemeno's Pizza, which has been around for 48 years, since 1976.

"We have a great product, everything is completely high quality and fresh here," Likar said. Maurie's Table uses several of Joliet's most iconic businesses: Mitchell's Food Mart, Milano Bakery, Mancuso Cheese Co. and Chellino Cheese Co. for its ingredients.

"We have an old recipe that never changed," added Dawn Bennett, Likar's sister.

Chicago Style Pizza Returned To Maurie's Menu This Year

The menu for Maurie's Table proclaims "The Area's Finest Pizza and Sandwiches."

Maurie's is known for its thin crust pizza, its deep dish pizza and its thin/deep pizza.

And new this year, the brother and sister managers of Maurie's have introduced the Chicago Style Pizza as a permanent fixture on their menu.

Unlike the traditional deep dish pizza, the sauce goes on the top with the Chicago Style.

"Our pizza is such a high quality pizza," Likar stressed. "We don't use any rolling machines or conveyor belts. We hand-roll everything. There is someone cooking those pizzas literally, making it the same way as the 1970s."

It had been a long time since Maurie's carried the Chicago Style pizza on its menu.

"So we just thought we'd bring this back and see if there's a demand for it," Dawn Bennett said. "The response has been great, and we're getting new menus printed soon."

The Chicago Style is available in individual pizzas as well as small, medium and large. "You have to look a lot of sauce because there's a lot of sauce on top," she remarked.

Also worth noting, the Maurie's menu includes six different specialty pizzas. There's the Everything, Vegetarian, Hawaiian, Italiano, Meat Lovers and the Spicy Italian.

Co-Managers Reveal Their Favorite Pizzas

With so many different pizzas available at Maurie's Table, Joliet Patch's editor asked Mike Likar and Dawn Bennett for their own preferences.

"Personally," Bennett said, "I love it super thin and super crispy. I love cheese, that's my favorite."

Mike Likar said he enjoys classic deep dish with sausage and mushrooms.

Overall, about 70 percent of the pizzas coming out of the oven are thin crust versus deep dish, the co-managers estimated.

"And we have one that's in between our thin crust and our deep down. It's called our thin-deep," Bennett pointed out. "It's a thinner crust in a deep dish pan. Certain customers live by that pizza."

Beef Rolls, Appetizers Other Menu Staples At Maurie's

If you're not in the mood for pizza, the expansive menu at Maurie's Table has 16 different options for sandwiches. All sandwiches come with french fries. Sandwiches include the poorboy, the Maurie's burger deluxe, Italian beef and Italian sausage.

The Maurie's Table beef roll serves at least two people. The Italian beef comes with American and mozzarella cheese wrapped in dough, and it's brushed with garlic butter "and baked to perfection," the menu touts. There's also a mini beef roll that serves one.

"We have a beef roll and a beef and cheese sandwich, two staples on our menu," Likar said. "Our beef comes from Mitchell's. We roast it ourselves, marinate it. It's all done on premises."

As for appetizers, there are 17 different options at Maurie's Table. Among the most popular are the Combo Plate: onion rings, mozzarella sticks, mushrooms and poppers. Otherwise, customers often order the chicken chunks, onion rings, boneless buffalo wings, bosco sticks or garlic bread with mozzarella cheese.

"The boneless buffalo wings, once they try them, they love them," Likar remarked. "We use a 37-year-old recipe for the wing sauce. It's a buffalo with a little kick, more flavor than spicy."

Likar and Bennett give credit to their loyal repeat customers for why Maurie's Table has endured in Joliet more than a half-century now.

Some regular customers sit in the same wooden booth every time they come here. "I can't say enough about our loyal customers," Bennett remarked. "That's what keeps us going, and that's the only reason we're still here."

Maurie's Table Hours

Maurie's Table averages an impressive 4.5 stars with a total of 578 Google Reviews.

"Laid-back joint offering thin-crust & deep-dish pizzas, plus hearty sandwiches and draft beer," is how the Joliet pizzeria is described on Google.

Maurie's Table is closed Mondays. It's open from 3 to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, noon to 9 p.m. Saturday and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday. The phone number is 815-744-2619.

Maurie's Table gets extremely busy on weekends, so reservations are recommended. On average, the deep dish pizza takes about 45 minutes to prepare before it's served in the pub. Thin crust pizzas normally take about 30 minutes.

Also, people "can call ahead, and this way we get it started for them," Bennett said.

Maurie's Table History

Originally opened in the 1960s as E.B.O. Inferno, the Glenwood Avenue restaurant transferred ownership in 1973 to Maurie Sauer. He renamed it Maurie's Table, and the Joliet legend was invented.

In 1986, Sauer sold his restaurant to the Bennett family, and they retained ownership until 2000 when Dawn and Mike's parents, Norm and Linda Likar, became the owners. The Likar family has owned and managed Maurie's Table the past 24 years and has no plans to stop.

"We're not going anywhere," Bennett said. "I'm not getting a new job, and I don't think he (my brother) is either."

To review the entire menu, visit the website for Maurie's Table.