MORE QUARANTINE STORIES--CHICAGO PIZZA AND HOT DOGS

A year or two ago, I wrote an article about my quest for the best fried chicken in the country.  We had, of course paid a visit to the original Col. Sanders restaurant in Corbin, KY, which is mostly a museum but does sell chicken.  We've had wonderful fried chicken in Forrest City, Arkansas and Paducah, Kentucky, as well as the Dixie Trucker's Home in McLean, Illinois.

As a native of the South Side of Chicago, I've come to realize that gastronomically speaking, Chicago is right up there with anywhere in the world, especially for comfort food.  Certainly other cities are proud of their iconic dishes.  For example, Philly has cheese steaks, New Orleans has po'boys and other Cajun specialties, Boston has lobster, the Outer Banks of North Carolina has buckets of shrimp, and my favorite, Connecticut serves grinder sandwiches.   

But Chicago was the pioneer city for so many delicious dishes--deep dish pizza, Vienna hot dogs, Italian beef and gyro sandwiches on pita bread.  Twinkies, Cracker Jacks, Wrigley's gum and, believe it or not, fudge brownies were also invented in Chicago. 

CHICAGO DEEP DISH PIZZA

Pizza has been around in one form or another for centuries and introduced into the U.S. by Italian immigrants in the early 20th Century.  The Food Channel had a show recently where they surveyed firefighters in New York and Chicago to vote on the " best" pizza.  New York won maybe  because they have more people than Chicago, and Chicagoans never got an opportunity to stuff the ballot box.  I wouldn't put much credence in that survey--New Yorkers put ketchup on their hot dogs.  No self-respecting Chicagoan would do that.

New York pizza has a thin flatbread crust, and it's not in the same league as Chicago pizza.   The Chicago deep dish pizza was developed in 1943 when Ike Sewell and his partner Ric Riccardo opened a restaurant called The Pizzeria on the Near North Side.  Riccardo an Italian immigrant owned a nearby restaurant while Sewell worked for Fleischmann's Distillery Co.  They originally planned to open a Mexican restaurant.  When they opened Due's Pizzeria in 1955, a block away, they changed the name of the original restaurant to Uno's.   The two restaurants are still there and are still successful.  Sewell eventually did open a Mexican restaurant Su Casa, next door to Due's.   My first credit card was from Su Casa when I was in college. 

Pizza historians point out that neither Sewell nor Riccardo knew anything about making pizza, and that the pizza was actually invented by Sewell's pizza chef Rudy Malnati and/or his cook Alice May Redmond. 

The restaurants were so successful that they ultimately franchised the Uno's Pizzeria to a Boston company with plans to bring Chicago pizza across the country.  They did so, and today Uno's Restaurants is a publicly held company operating about 150 locations.  They even have locations in Saudi Arabia, South Korea and India.  The only problem with the franchise pizza is that the recipe, although deep dish, is not the same as the original.  If you're from Chicago, you'll know the difference.  The Uno's near our house closed last year.

Rudy's son Lou Malnati went off on his own in 1971, serving similar deep dish pizza,  Lou died in 1978, but his 2 sons run the company.  They now have over 50 restaurants mostly in the Chicago area as well as a few in Phoenix, Arizona, a city with many former Chicagoans.  The cook Alice May Redmond went with her sister to Gino's East which has similar pizza and multiple locations.

The big difference between Chicago pizza and New York pizza is the thick crust which can be 2 inches thick  It is cooked in a round pan  The flaky crust is made from unbleached wheat flour with lots of butter, giving it a flaky biscuit like taste.   If you're on a diet you probably don't want to read this.  The unique taste comes from 3 types of fat--vegetable oil, olive oil and butter.  They build the pizza in layers.  First they spread the mozzarella cheese, add the Italian sweet or hot sausage patties or vegetables and then the crushed plum tomatoes.  The cheese must be on the bottom; otherwise it would burn in the hot oven.

Even during a pandemic, they will get that pizza to you.  All I had to do was call ahead give a credit card number and they meet you at the curb.

VIENNA HOT DOGS

Two Austrian immigrants, Emil Reichel and Samuel Ladany created their all beef sausage recipe for the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.  They served it from a horse drawn wagon.  It was a big hit and the Vienna Sausage Manufacturing Co. was born. 

If you go to Vienna, Austria and ask for a hot dog, (or a frankfurter or wiener), they won't know what you're talking about.  The sausages, or wieners,  in Austria are more like knockwurst and nothing like the ones here.  They don't come on a bun.  In the real Vienna, the sausages are made with pork, not beef.  Incidentally, in Berlin Germany, the big thing is currywurst, and to American taste buds it really is the wurst. But it's popular in Germany; they sell it everywhere.     As Otto von Bismarck once said, "Laws are like sausages it is better not to see them being made!"

If you order a hot dog in Chicago they give it to you with everything on it--mustard, chopped onions, neon green relish, celery salt, dill pickle, sport peppers and maybe sauerkraut--all on a poppy seed bun.  Personally, I always skip the relish.  No ketchup however.  If someone sees you putting ketchup on a hot dog you may get a cold, threatening glare from bystanders.   Maybe not as bad as my wife smearing mayonnaise on a corned beef sandwich (on white bread) in a Kosher deli but bad nevertheless,

The 1893 World's Fair, the Columbian Exposition, as it was called was the celebration of the 401st anniversary of Columbus "discovering" America.  The fair was best known for introducing the Ferris Wheel and the zipper but the most enduring legacy were the foods introduced to the world for the first time.  For breakfast the fair introduced Cream of Wheat and Shredded Wheat to the world, courtesy of flour millers from Minnesota and Denver.   For lunch and snacks, in addition to all-beef hot dogs, we're talking brownies, which weren't called that until years later,  and Cracker Jacks.  Brownies were small cakes baked by socialite Bertha Palmer (see:  Palmer House Hotel) which were intended to fit inside a box lunch.  They were chocolate but didn't originally have fudge.

I could go on about Italian beef and gyros and maybe I will in a later installment.  Other surprising Chicago inventions are Shrimp de Jonghe and Chicken Vesuvio, both named after now defunct restaurants.