Aurelio’s Pizza Restaurant & Bar

First and foremost, great pizza. The large pepperoni and sausage pizza was great. The $ 47 bill for a large pizza, size caesar salad, and two sodas was outstandingly expensive. I couldn’t believe the bill when I called, but I was desperate for food — we were moving — and I just accepted it.
All in all, 5 stars for the pizza — minus 2 for the cost.

I’m a fan of this pizza chain and think its one of the top thin crusts in the city. Two favorite are Aurelio’s and Pats. Have had way to many bad thin crust pizzas down town. Now I will state that looking at the rating and comments there does appear to be a slight difference between how the locations make there pizza. I have eaten at the original, one out in Lisle, one out in Berwyn, and this one downtown.
I have learned over several dinning experiences to custom order my pizza at this location letting them know extra sauce, light cheese, little more done and then the pizza’s turn out great just like the other locations. If you do not custom order it and just tell them the ingredients and size you will get a pizza that’s still good but not as good as it could be a little different than many of the locations.
Keep this in mind when ordering otherwise great pizza, décor and locations are average but I do not care as I’m there for the za. Small but ok beer list.

One of Chicago’s best kept secrets! We go here quite often and we have never been disappointed. The restaurant is never too busy either. We always have a relaxing, comfortable dinner every time we go here. We were a bit concerned with our last visit as everything was quite salty. I am thinking that this was an exception to the rule as we have never experienced anything like this so far.
This is one of my favorite thin crust pizzas in Chicago. The sauce is one of the best around. If you are not familiar with it, I strongly recommend that you give it a shot.

Terrible! I think this is the worst pizza I have ever had.
Ordered delivery of thick crust 18″ and it ‘s sauce was disgusting.
The bottom crust was splitting from what seemed like another crust on top of it but still beneath all the sauce & cheese. So we are talking crust over crust that separated. Holding it together was not easy. However it turned out to be a good thing since the bottom layer of crust was way overdone and dry — almost burnt.
Nasty stuff.
They should be ashamed serving their pizza in Chicago!

Aurelio’s was a staple of my youth. As a matter of fact, I think I may have even cried when they shut down their full-​service restaurant in the south suburb of Justice many years ago.
Maybe my tastes have changed since tween-​dom, but while revisiting my old favorite at its Loop location, it fell horribly flat, and did not come close to the Aurelio’s of yesteryear. I hate to say it, but most everything was downright bad.
Located in the lobby of the Holiday Inn, I was expecting it to be a bit more crowded than it was. Only two other tables were occupied at 6PM on a Thursday night. Our server was one of the highlights; she was friendly and very efficient.
Not having a taste for pizza nor any of the pasta dishes on the menu, I kept my order simple. And order of cheesy garlic bread and an antipasto salad. The bread came out first, and looked and smelled divine. The mozzarella was plentiful, and perfectly browned on top, and the garlic smell wafting from them was just heavenly. Two bites in, my mouth became a tiny version of the Sahara desert. I could not taste anything on these but salt. I’m wondering if they used garlic salt in lieu of actual garlic. A glass of Pepsi later, I could feel my tongue again, and absently nibbled around the corners of the bread until my salad came. Yes, I understand my salad includes deli meat and olives. which inherently can be a bit salty. The salad suffered the same fate as my bread, as it tasted like a giant plate of brine. I had to scrape off the meat and olives, but enjoyed a salad of cheese and lettuce, topped with some tasty creamy garlic dressing.
I need someone to remind me NOT to relive my childhood through food, because if every experience is like this, I will be out of warm and fuzzy memories all too quickly.

The best sauce, hands-​down.

This review is for the downtown Aurelio’s only. It’s just not up to snuff. I LOVE Aurelio’s. The suburban locations (particularly the original brick oven in Homewood) are divine. But I think the downtown one got the recipe screwed up. They use too much cheese and NOT ENOUGH sauce or toppings. I don’t know what can be done. Maybe they need new cooks or just to have the head of the franchise (Joe Aurelio) re-​send the recipe. It’s still good, but don’t judge all Aurelio’s locations based on this one alone. The sauce of Aurelio’s is very sweet, and I think, quite perfect.

I wish I could tell you about the awesome Aurelio’s pizza that I remember growing up with at this location. However, I never ate what I ordered here. After sitting and waiting 30 minutes for our appetizer and asking about it twice, we decided to leave.
I hardly ever leave a restaurant, but the service was so horrible! DO NOT GO HERE! If you want Aurelio’s go to the suburbs.

Ok, here’s the deal: I’m not a pizza expert.
I like pizza, but it all seems the same to me. I prefer New York pizza to Chicago pizza and I like my pizza crust how I like my men… thick enough to grab on to but not too thick that I need a fork. (Yeah, that didn’t make sense, but at least I didn’t say that I like them flexible enough to fold in half and slightly chewy because that’s just weird!)
Anyway, I was delightfully surprised by Aurelio’s pizza. The crust was perfect, the toppings were delicious, and there was just the right amount of spice and flavor on each or our pizzas. Also, the mozzarella sticks were top notch… and I truly am an expert on mozzarella sticks.

Pizza is good: got the thin crust half cheese half pepperoni. Somewhat greasy, the underside a little undercooked and soft, very heavy on the cheese which is a mozz/​cheddar blend. Overall, I would order again but so many other better options out there
The wings were outstanding: standard buffalo wings but crispiness and sauce were just right!

Oh Aurelio’s… how I want to give you a decent review… I’ll start out by saying the liunch and dinner food is pretty good… avoid breakfast.
The waitstaff and bartender are sub-​par. On one occasion our party of 6 waited over 20min to get drinks due to the bartender having a personal conversation with one of the patrons at the bar.
Perhaps if the food and beverage director at the hotel stepped up and made some improvements I wouldn’t cringe so much when we have guests from out of state staying and eating here.

Arguably, one of the best tasting pizzas around. What a sleeper!
Convient parking to run in and pick up to go in downtown Chicago.

Where to begin?
I was in the area and decided to have lunch at this place. I went with the pizza and pasta buffett. It. was. HORRIBLE. Pizzas were stuck to the mesh on the buffett. It looked days (or more?) old. The pasta options looked and smelled inedible. All of this plus a pop for roughly $ 13. One of the worst dining experiences I’ve had in a long, long time. What is up with the high ratings?

When you read the menu, there is a pricing bar for the thin crust pizza that has a designated price of up to $ 22 depending on size. Above this you are encouraged to order the «pizza by number» and they give various number options. There is no mention that if you order the numbered pizzas, that there will be an upcharge for ingredients. It merely states that «additional ingredients» will be charged $ 2.75 per ingredient. So the menu is misleading — it makes it appear as though you are to be charged a set fee for any of the numbered pizzas, and then if you add ingredients, you’d pay the upcharge. I was not happy to see the upcharge for sausage and pepperoni as a result of this when my bill arrived. I was using a gift card so wanted to keep the total to a certain amount.
Our server was friendly, but we had to ask when we wanted refills of our drinks.
The pizza here is a little different from the suburban Aurelio’s I’ve been to. It is slightly more cheesy, more salty, and less sweet than the Downers Grove branch, for example. It is still darn good and they do one of the better crusts around. This one was a little «crusty» at the edges of the pizza, making for a large delineation between middle pieces and edge pieces, more so than normal.
There is something tragic, yet warm about Holiday Inns. This Aurelio’s is in one. It also means free parking for Aurelio’s customers, and I hate fighting for parking in the city. That also means to use the washroom you have to go in the Holiday inn hallway to one. Very 70s feeling indeed. Well this was the «hallway of bad art.» All different styles, minimal technique. I couldn’t tell whether they were for sale or not. Until I got to the balloon animal painting. The one where they painted a cockroach among multi-​colored balloon shapes and animals. Now, I don’t mean to nit-​pick, but, is it really wise for a hotel chain to hang up a painting that contains a painted cockroach in the hall between a restaurant and the bathroom? Email me if you want the pic. It is really ridiculous. It is also terrible marketing.
I am also a little annoyed when they close off the section of the nice part of the restaurant and make us sit in the less-​clean bar part of the restaurant.
I’ll probably stick to take-​out from Aurelio’s from here on out.

No. Just no! I love pizza, if I could eat it everyday and for every meal I would. This was weird pizza. With my friends, we ordered 2 large pizzas for delivery, and I fully anticipated eating half of one. I ate 2 squares, a tiny corner piece, and I was done.
What is up with the sogginess? Ick. And, I ordered spinach and garlic. Why is their ricotta on the pizza? Friends say that taste is normal.
Thankfully, I also ordered a spinach salad to split with everyone. Instead, I ate all of it. It was a decent salad, but $ 10? I don’t think so.
Wouldn’t ever order again.

I’ve lost my patience with Aurelios. When your food arrives cold and late… what’s the point?
Triple the time window you are promised and call to verify your online order and that you are in fact in the delivery zone indicated on the website… I’ve had problems each of the last 3 times I ordered.

I’m a glutard, so I was here for the gluten free pizza. Pretty awesome that it’s not too terrible and very close to my hood.
It’s really small. I usually get an order of wings and the pizza. I guess otherwise I probably get two. I wouldn’t go out of my way to go get this pizza, but if I don’t wanna hike it all up to the northside for Chicago’s Pizza, it’s pretty good in a pinch.

The husband and I thought it would be nice to dine in for lunch (only done carry out before) but I don’t think we’ll be back. The service wasn’t very good at all as the server disappeared on us when we wanted to order. We waited awhile but since she was still missing, we asked another server to help us look for her! Anyways, she finally came and didn’t even apologize for the delay.
We were looking at their buffet and although some things looked appetizing, the pizzas looked very dried out so we decided to just order off the menu. We ordered the cobb salad which was delicious, esp with grilled chicken on top (the creamy garlic dressing just seemed like mayo with garlic but it was still good haha). The bbq chicken pizza was just okay to me and not evenly distributed so some slices had almost no bbq sauce or no chicken.

This review gets 2 stars because their fabulous thin crust pizza gets 4 stars, but their other stuff gets zero stars.
Stick to pizza Aurelios. Your wings had no meat on them but were absolutely doused with bbq sauce, so much so that it made me sick to even try to pick one up. And the talapia, gross. It was like you put it in a tub of melted butter and then slapped it on the plate.
Great pizza though. I’ve had that pizza a dozen or so times since living in Illinois and have never been disappointed. But don’t go with anything other than a pizza and salad from Aurelio’s.

For the record let me state, I have been staying at the Holiday Inn that this restaurant is located in for three years. My visits have ranged from 2 nights to over a week. It is the hotel choice of my company. So I have been staying and dining here longer then I have been Unilocaling. This February was my first opportunity to comment.
I do have coworkers that love the breakfast here, they love the convenience of it being in the lobby.
When I said this was a misplaced restaurant, I basically was just stating that I feel it would be better in a strip center or a free standing location. If it were, I would travel to experience the pizza, because it would be worth it.