Definitely some excellent food options for a Chicago visit in this thread. I would urge pizza lovers to try Chicago's thin crust pizza too. It's a bit different than New York pizza and quite yummy. A lot of us native Chicagoans grew up on this type of pizza vs. the stuffed pizza. For our family, stuffed pizza was a once in awhile thing. We had the thin crust pizza from a neighborhood place A LOT. And I still try to get a thin crust pizza when I visit. Gold Coast Dogs is great too. Skip the fires, get a pizza puff with your dog or beef sammy. That's a uniquely Chicago item. You'll either thank me or curse me later for the pizza puff... it can kind of be a gut bomb ^_^ !
Same here. Native Chicagoan who never even heard of stuffed pizza until high school. I get stuffed pizza probably twice a year, usually at some point during the holidays when friends drop by and I'll order one for variety, once when the mood hits.
Growing up, having pizza meant getting in the car and heading to 84th and Pulaski, for Vito & Nick's Pizza. Nothing fancy. You could look into the kitchen and watch them toss the crust. Miniature Christmas lights strung over the bar. A beat up jukebox blasting out tunes. I remember hearing the Beatles a lot.
The pizza had a super thin crust. They called it a cracker crust, and that was pretty accurate, as it was like a thin, flaky cracker, yet it held up to the toppings. Unlike New York pizza, thin crust in Chicago is almost always cut into squares, not wedges. Is that done elsewhere?
I thought for sure that the place was gone and forgotten. But to my surprise, it's still there. Looks like a visit to the Ashburn neighborhood for thin crust and some Beatles tunes is in the future for me.
