Stunod's Pizzeria, the Southwest Side pizza shop known for its hand-rolled crust and fennel-spiced sausage, is opening a second location at 1503 W. Taylor St. in Little Italy later this fall. The new spot sits near the University of Illinois-Chicago campus, just a couple blocks east of the UIC medical campus and the Illinois Medical District, and puts the growing pizzeria in the middle of one of Chicago's most storied dining corridors.
Brothers Frank and Austin Battaglia, who co-own Stunod's, first built their name with a food cart serving Italian ice, according to WhatNow Chicago. The brothers ferried their frozen treats across Chicago and as far north as Evanston before turning their sights to pizza, eventually debuting their brick-and-mortar pizzeria in October 2019. Their original shop still sits at 6535 W. 63rd St. near Midway Airport, and the pair still runs Buddy's, their original Italian ice business, on the side.
The Taylor Street location will land on the south side of the street, next to Golden Thai and across from Hawkeye's Bar and Rosebud Taylor Street Italian, per the same WhatNow Chicago report. An exact opening date has not yet been announced, and the outlet notes that Stunod's owners have not yet provided comment on further details.
A Storefront Steeped in Neighborhood History
The address carries its own weight in Little Italy lore. The space was previously home to The Patio, also known as Patio Hot Dogs, a beloved Chicago-style hot dog and Italian roast beef stand that served the neighborhood starting in 1948, according to The Chicago El Stop Food Hunt Project. Taylor Street itself has an even deeper pizza pedigree: it once hosted Granato's Pizzeria Napolitana at 1014 W. Taylor St., widely considered Chicago's first dedicated pizzeria when it opened around 1923 and operated for roughly four decades, as detailed in a Facebook post from Block Club Chicago.
For the Battaglia brothers, the move is personal. They described bringing their pizzeria to Taylor Street as a dream come true, telling Block Club Chicago they frequently visited the corridor during childhood alongside their father. Austin Battaglia and Frank Battaglia have also said they feel blessed to have grown up in a family with plenty of influence in the pizza industry, a nod to their Battaglia family roots in Chicago's food business.
A Family Business With Deep Roots in Chicago Food
That influence runs through Battaglia Distributing Co., Inc., a major Chicago foodservice distributor founded in 1902 by Sicilian immigrant Agostino Battaglia. The company, according to its own company history, now operates a 250,000-square-foot facility and USDA meat plant in the city's Pilsen neighborhood, giving the family generations of experience in food supply before Stunod's ever opened its doors.
The pizzeria's name draws on that same Italian-American heritage. Stunod, also spelled stunad, is slang derived from the Neapolitan stunato or Sicilian stunatu, meaning out of tune, and it's used colloquially across Chicago's Italian-American communities to describe someone foolish or a little out of touch, per Wiktionary.
Critical Praise for the Crust and the Sausage
Stunod's has already picked up notable culinary credibility at its original location. Chicago Tribune food critic Nick Kindelsperger praised the pizzeria's crust for its puffy structure with crunch and chew, calling the juicy, fennel-spiced Italian sausage the real star of the pizza, a review quoted on Stunod's Pizzeria's own website. Food journalist Steve Dolinsky also featured the pizzeria in his book, The Ultimate Chicago Pizza Guide, citing its hand-rolling technique for producing a slightly raised center and airy crumb structure, according to the same source.
The menu at Stunod's spans well beyond pepperoni, mushroom, sausage, and hot giardiniera-topped pies. Customers can order customizable pizzas across multiple sizes and crust options, including deep-dish and calzone styles, alongside burgers, sandwiches, and pastas, per the pizzeria's Seamless delivery listing. That same menu also nods to the brothers' Italian ice roots, offering traditional Sicilian fried dough called sfingi alongside homemade Italian beef and meatball sandwiches.
Community Ties Ahead of the Taylor Street Debut
The Battaglia brothers have already been building buzz on Taylor Street ahead of the opening. They served their breaded steak sandwiches to attendees at the 2026 Festa Italiana neighborhood street festival, according to local food reviewer F'nAround, giving Little Italy residents an early taste of what's coming. That kind of grassroots outreach lands ahead of a debut in a neighborhood where legacy Italian eateries and decades of dining history set a high bar for newcomers, per the same reviewer's assessment.
Frank Battaglia's civic profile has grown alongside the business. He received the Augustus Caesar Award from the Italian American Executives of Transportation in 2026 for his restaurant entrepreneurship and local charitable donations to Chicago firehouses, police stations, and schools, an honor that recognized his growth despite launching the business just months before COVID-19 hit.
With the Patio storefront being brought back to life this fall, Stunod's second location will bring a new generation of Chicago pizza tradition into a space that has already spent decades feeding the neighborhood. WhatNow Chicago reports that an exact opening date has still not been set, leaving Little Italy diners to wait for the first slice.
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