Rance's Chicago Pizza
1420 Baker St
Costa Mesa
714-708-2143
Rance's Chicago Pizza is across Harbor Blvd. from Moscow Deli and Empanada's Place. I heard about Rance's and wanted to see how they compared to Tony’s Little Italy Pizza, which still has a very good deep dish or stuffed Chicago pizza, but the service there now sucks.
Rance's is located in the very busy Target shopping center towards the southwest part of the center. Rance's has a row of tables and booths, along with bar area. They have been open for about three months and the word has gotten out there in the Costa Mesa area, if you want Chicago pizza go to Rance's.
Medium stuffed House Special, $23.69, sausage, green peppers, onions and mushrooms. The crust on this pizza was great! Maybe the best crust of any deep dish pizza I've had in LA. Very light, flakey, and buttery. It was almost like eating a biscuit or apple turnover. Though this was not cornmeal crust, like some people from Chicago prefer.
The sauce was on the sweet side. But lots of good quality tomatoes, I'm guessing they are canned, but don't know for sure.
The cheese is thick and piled on and they use a good quality cheese.
The veggie toppings were cut too small and just blended into the cheese an sauce. They should cut them bigger.
Another thing that should be bigger is the amount of sausage on the pizza. I'm guessing the pizza is 12in., well the sausage-which is a flat piece of sausage only covered about about 8in. of the pizza! When I cut a slice of pizza from the center it was filled with sausage, but towards the crust, there was only green peppers, mushrooms, and onions. But, the sausage had a mild flavor. They use a good quality sausage.
Despite the small amount of sausage, this was a very good pizza, better than Tony's but maybe not as good as Hollywood Pies or Masa. The flavors all work well together.
Service was nice and friendly. But, they need to either hire a host/hostess or find a better way to let first time customers know if they are a side down restaurant or counter service when they first walk in. When I walked in, I went straight to the counter and ordered my pizza. I didn't realize if you wanted to dine in, you could have sit down and ordered. The other compliant I have is that they need to inform customers how long stuffed or deep dish pizza takes to bake. Since I've been to a ton of Chicago pizza places I know the time and was expecting to wait 45 minutes. But, if people haven't been to a Chicago pizza place, they may not know and then complain.
Even with the smaller amount of sausage on the pizza, I would gladly go back to Rance's for their stuffed pizza. They also have a good selection of beer on tap!
