Giordano’s is known for Chicago-style stuffed pizza — a double-crusted pie built around cheese. That makes it an awkward stop for vegans, and the honest version of this guide is shorter and more cautious than the one it replaces.
Answer: it depends, and Giordano’s does not publish enough information to be sure. The only nutrition document the chain puts out is a calorie and cholesterol chart. There is no allergen chart, no ingredient list, and no vegan label anywhere in it. Nothing on the menu can be confirmed vegan from an official Giordano’s source. What the chart does settle is which items are definitely out — and it puts the fries in that group.
What Giordano’s Publishes
Giordano’s links a single 14-page PDF, Giordanos-Nutritionals.pdf, from its own site. It lists calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, fibre, sugar and protein for each menu item. It does not list ingredients, it does not mark allergens, and the word “vegan” does not appear in it once. The chain’s online menu pages are behind a bot check and could not be read for this update, so item descriptions could not be verified either. Everything below was checked on 28 July 2026.
The cholesterol column is the one thing that gives a hard answer. Dietary cholesterol comes only from animal ingredients, so any non-zero figure rules an item out. A zero does not prove the reverse — it cannot rule out honey, or a dough conditioner, or the oil a thing was fried in.
The Fries Are Not Vegan
This guide used to list “Giordano’s Crispy Fries” as a probable vegan option with a note to ask about animal byproducts. There is no such item now. The fries on the current chart are Garlic Parmesan Fries, listed at 11 mg of cholesterol. Parmesan is in the name and dairy is in the numbers. They are not a vegan option and never were under that name.
The Salads
The Greek Salad and the Giordano’s House Salad are both still on the menu, and both are still built with cheese — the chart shows 6 mg of cholesterol for a starter Greek Salad and 3 mg for a starter House Salad. Ordering either without the feta or the asiago is a reasonable request, but Giordano’s publishes nothing about what is left: the specific unknowns are the lemon vinaigrette and whether anything else in the bowl is dairy-based. The Lemon Vinaigrette does appear separately in the dipping-sauce list at 0 mg cholesterol, which is the closest thing to reassurance available.
Avoid the Caesar (25 mg at starter size), the Italian Wedge (66 mg), the Italiano (34 mg) and the Harvest Greens (20 mg). Those figures are all before any protein is added.
Dipping Sauces
The chart lists six. Marinara is 0 mg cholesterol, as are Buffalo and BBQ — an earlier version of this article called Buffalo and BBQ non-vegan, which the chart does not support. Ranch is 36 mg and Blue Cheese is 46 mg, and those two are the ones to skip. None of the six is labelled vegan by Giordano’s; the previous claim here that the marinara is “labelled vegan on their menu” could not be substantiated anywhere on giordanos.com.
The Impossible Topping
The most useful thing in the document is something this guide never mentioned: Giordano’s carries an Impossible™ topping, available on both deep dish and re-designed thin crust, listed at 0 mg cholesterol in every size. It is a plant-based meat substitute rather than a vegan pizza — the pie it goes on still comes with cheese unless you ask otherwise, and Giordano’s does not offer a vegan cheese. But it exists, and it is the one item on the chart that was clearly formulated without animal protein.
Pizza, Pasta and Drinks
The crust is the open question this guide has always got wrong by answering it. Giordano’s publishes no ingredient list for its dough, so no one can say from an official source whether the deep dish, thin or extra thin crusts contain dairy or egg. Ordering a crust with sauce and vegetables and no cheese is possible; calling the result vegan is not something the brand’s own documents support. The named vegetable pizzas do not help: Super Veggie and Fresh Spinach both carry cholesterol at every size, because they are made with cheese.
Spaghetti with marinara is listed at 0 mg cholesterol in the entrée, family and lunch portions, and the kids’ version is the same. That makes it the most promising hot dish on the chart. The unknown is the pasta itself — whether it is an egg pasta is not disclosed. Lasagna with marinara, by contrast, is 134 mg, because it is layered with cheese.
Among drinks, the chart lists coffee, hot tea, iced tea, lemonade, club soda, bottomless and bottled Pepsi products, Lipton green tea and Razberry tea, all at 0 mg cholesterol. San Pellegrino, which this guide used to list, does not appear on the current chart.
Cross-Contact
Giordano’s publishes no allergen statement and no cross-contact statement at all. That absence is itself worth knowing: this is a kitchen whose signature product is a cheese-stuffed pizza, with shared prep surfaces, shared utensils and a shared fryer serving calamari, chicken bites and cheese curds. If dairy contact matters to you rather than just dairy ingredients, that is a question for the manager, because no document on the site answers it.
The Bottom Line
Giordano’s was founded in 1974 on Chicago’s south side by brothers Efren and Joseph Boglio, working from their mother’s Italian Easter pie recipe, and the chain is still built around that stuffed pizza. For a vegan, the realistic order is a no-cheese pizza with vegetable toppings or the Impossible topping, spaghetti marinara, a de-cheesed salad, and marinara for dipping — with the honest caveat that Giordano’s confirms none of it. If you want a pizza chain comparison, the Lou Malnati’s guide covers the same Chicago deep-dish ground.
