A killer tag team: Burgers and pizza
Pro wrestler and her husband open pizzeria in Lincoln Park
By Kevin Pang, Chicago Tribune reporter
April 4, 2013

Of all the tropes about professional wrestling, the most tiring is the one about it being fake. Here’s what’s really fake: celebrities who attach their names to restaurants, then show up twice a year to wave and pose for pictures.

How do those two statements sync up? Several weeks ago, professional wrestler Lisa Marie Varon and her husband Lee opened The Squared Circle, a pizzeria in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Your knee-jerk reaction might be, “Oh, athletes cashing in with the lowest-denominator bar food.”

There are several reasons to think this isn’t just an in-name-only cash grab for the Varons. For one, they live a few blocks away from Fullerton and Ashland, where their restaurant is. Lee Varon helped open a California Pizza Kitchen in Louisville, Ky., claims to have spun “hundreds of thousands of pizzas” in his career and mans this kitchen. And when I asked Lisa Marie Varon how she describes her job to strangers, she answered: “I own a restaurant and I’m a professional wrestler.” The order is important.

The most persuasive argument is that on a recent Saturday night, two days before a scheduled sit-down interview, I anonymously dined at the restaurant with friends. Unlike Tara, the antagonistic on-screen character she plays for TNA’s “Impact Wrestling” — in wrestling parlance, she’s considered a “heel” — real-life Lisa Marie happily snapped photos with fans, offered hugs, then sat down with customers and asked for feedback on food. She shared war stories from the wrestling road — she spent 10 years in the WWE as Victoria, where twice she held the women’s championship belt. When she left the restaurant that night, it was because she had to walk her dogs. She seemed more engaged than, say, Michael Jordan at Michael Jordan’s Steak House.

But let’s not bury the lead: The pizza and burgers at The Squared Circle are quite good, miles beyond my expectations for a pro wrestling-themed restaurant. The regular crust isn’t too dough- or yeast-heavy, doesn’t swell around the perimeter and is closer in bite to a crisp, lightly garlicked breadstick. (There’s also cracker crust and deep dish.) The underside is uniformly golden with dimples along the surface, good if you prefer hearing your pizza while biting.

The deep-dish pizza uses duck fat, which gives the bottom crust a sturdy crunch. When the square pie is baked in the 675-degree stone oven, the sides of the deep-dish pie puff up, resembling — the Varons say this was a happy coincidence — the turnbuckles in the corner of a wrestling ring. The interior of this swollen side-crust remains cotton-ball soft. I’m not a big fan of deep dish in general, only because most versions contain a half-inch layer each of sausage and cheese. By contrast, the toppings on The Squared Circle’s Hangover Helper are portioned so you’re not ingesting a meat bomb — pepperoni, toothsome diced bacon, tomato sauce and two fried eggs, their runny yolks leaching down the pizza slope.

There’s also the Kentucky Bourbon, a barbecue pizza that isn’t too cloyingly barbecue — chicken or pulled pork, mashed potatoes and a light brush stroke of a house-blended bourbon sauce.

All the burgers here pay homage to the Minnesotan “Juicy Lucy,” where the patty is stuffed with cheese before it’s cooked. I only tried one, a special that night with jalapenos, bacon and Cholula hot sauce aioli. Sadly it didn’t have that desired cheese ooze, but it was a solid effort otherwise. The patty — in between steakhouse thick and griddle-top thin — was cooked through but retained its moistness. The pickled jalapeno and hot sauce aioli is just a marvelous pairing. (Also on the menu: “Fat Elvis,” a peanut butter-stuffed burger with bananas and bacon.)

Save for the autographed tights hung on the walls and the pay-per-view bouts on the big screen, the wrestling aspect is rather subdued. Thankfully there’s no “Sausage Smackdown” or “Hulkamania Hawaiian” or any other tackily named menu items. There is, however, a menacing photo of Lisa Marie Varon by the entrance, posing angrily next to a bruised-up male opponent. She warns that your fate will be similar if you don’t tip the servers.

kpang@tribune.com
Twitter @pang

The Squared Circle
2418 N. Ashland Ave.; 773-904-8170
thesquaredcircle.biz
Hours: 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Sunday, Monday, Wednesday;
11 a.m.-midnight Thursday-Saturday

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