Chicago, Illinois - Eat & Drink

Eat

Chicago is one of the great restaurant towns in America. If you're looking for a specific kind of cuisine, check out the Chicago#Ethnic_neighborhoods|neighborhoods. Greek food on the Chicago/Near West Side|Near West Side, Indian in Chicago/Rogers Park|Rogers Park, and soul food in Chicago/Bronzeville|Bronzeville are just the tip of the iceberg. Other areas are more eclectic: Chicago/North Lincoln|Lincoln Square and Albany Park have unrivaled Middle Eastern, German, and Korean food, while Chicago/Uptown|Uptown offers nearly the whole Southeast Asian continent with Ghanaian, Nigerian, contemporary American, stylish Japanese, and down-home Swedish a few blocks away. There are great, cheap restaurants and student hangouts in Chicago/South Chicago Shore|Hyde Park.

If you're interested in celebrity chefs and unique creations, Chicago/Lincoln Park-Old Town|Lincoln Park and Chicago/Wicker Park|Wicker Park have plenty of award-winners. Chicago/Near North|River North has several good upscale restaurants, but don't waste your time on tourist traps like Rainforest Cafe, Cheesecake Factory or Hard Rock Cafe. In fact, you should never submit to standing in line—there are always equally good restaurants nearby. No matter what you enjoy, you'll have a chance to eat well in Chicago, and you won't need to spend a lot of money doing it—unless you want to, of course.

But while Chicago has a world class dining scene downtown, it is the low-end where it truly distinguishes itself. No other city on earth takes fast food so seriously; for those who don't concern themselves with calorie counting, Chicago is cheap, greasy heaven. A couple "culinary specialties" in particular deserve further description.

Chicago pizza

Chicago's most prominent contribution to world cuisine might be the deep dish pizza. Delivery chains as far away as Kyoto market "Chicago-style pizza," but the only place to be sure you're getting the real thing is in Chicago. To make a deep dish pizza, a thin layer of dough is laid into a deep round pan and pulled up the sides, and then meats and vegetables — Italian sausage, onions, bell peppers, mozzarella cheese, and more — are lined on the crust. At last, tomato sauce goes on top, and the pizza is baked. It's gooey, messy, not recommended by doctors, and delicious. When you dine on deep dish pizza, don't wear anything you were hoping to wear again soon. Some nationally-known deep dish pizza hubs are Pizzeria UNO and DUE, Gino's East, Giordano's, and Lou Malnati's, but plenty of local favorites exist. Ask around — people won't be shy about giving you their opinion.

But deep dish is not the end of the line in a city that takes its pizza so seriously. Chicago also prides itself on its distinctive thin-crust pizza and stuffed pizzas. The Chicago thin crust has a thin, cracker-like, crunchy crust, which somehow remains soft and doughy on the top side. Toppings and a lot of a thin, spiced Italian tomato sauce go under the mozzarella cheese, and the pizza is sliced into squares.

The stuffed pizza is a monster, enough to make an onlooker faint. Start with the idea of a deep dish, but then find a much deeper dish and stuff a lot more toppings under the cheese. The stuffed pizza has an additional layer of dough over the cheese, which allows the whole pizza to be cooked within an enclosed pie-like structure and prevents the sauce from mixing with the toppings and cheese. Allow 45 minutes to an hour for pizza places to make one of these and allow 3-4 extra notches on your belt for the ensuing weight gain. Arguably the best stuffed pizza in town is at Bella Bacino's in the Chicago/Loop|Loop, but other excellent vendors include Giordano's, Gino's, and Edwardo's.

The Chicago hot dog

This may come as a surprise to New Yorkers, but the Chicago hot dog is the king of all hot dogs — indeed, it is the perfect hot dog. Perhaps due to the city's history of Polish and German immigration, Chicago takes its dogs way more seriously than the rest of the country. A Chicago hot dog is always all-beef (usually Vienna beef), always served on a poppy-seed bun, and topped with what looks like a full salad of mustard, diced tomatoes, a dill pickle spear, sport (chili) peppers, a generous sprinkling of celery salt, diced onion, and a sweet-pickle relish endemic-to-Chicago that is dyed an odd, vibrant bright-green color. It's a full meal, folks.

Ketchup is regarded as an abomination on a proper Chicago-style hot dog. Self-respecting establishments will refuse orders to put the ketchup on the dog, and many have signs indicating that they don't serve it; truly serious hot dog joints don't even allow the condiment on the premises. The reason for Chicago's ketchup aversion is simple — ketchup contains sugar, which overwhelms the taste of the beef and prevents its proper enjoyment. Hence, ketchup's replacement with diced tomatoes. Similarly, Chicagoans eschew fancy mustards that would overwhelm the flavor of the meat in favor of simple yellow mustard. And for the hungry visiting New Yorkers, the same goes for sugary sauerkraut — just no.

At most hot dog places, you will have the option to try a Maxwell Street Polish instead. Born on the eponymous street of the Chicago/Near West Side|Near West Side, the Polish is an all-beef sausage on a bun, with fewer condiments than the Chicago hot dog: usually just grilled onions, mustard, and a few chili peppers.

In a tragic, bizarre twist of fate, the areas of Chicago most visited by tourists (i.e., Chicago/Loop|the Loop) lack proper Chicago hot dog establishments. If you are downtown and want to experience a Chicago hot dog done right, the nearest safe bet is Chicago/Near North#Eat|Portillo's. Although, if you're up for a little hot dog adventure, you can eat one right at the source, at the Chicago/Lincoln Park-Old Town#Budget|Vienna Beef Factory deli. Sadly, both baseball parks botch their dogs.

Italian Beef

The Italian Beef sandwich completes the Chicago triumvirate of tasty greasy treats. The main focus of the sandwich is the beef, and serious vendors will serve meat of a surprisingly good quality, which is slow-roasted, and thinly shaved before being loaded generously onto chewy, white, Italian-style bread. Two sets of options will come flying at you, so prepare yourself: sweet peppers or hot and dipped or not. The "sweet" peppers are sautéed bell peppers, while the hots are a mixed Chicago giardiniera. The dip, of course, is a sort of French dip of the sandwich back into the beef broth. (Warning: dipped Italian Beefs are sloppy!) If you are in the mood, you may be able to get an Italian Beef with cheese melted over the beef, although travelers looking for the "authentic Italian Beef" perhaps should not stray so far from tradition.

The Italian Beef probably was invented by Italian-American immigrants working in the Union Stockyards on the Chicago/Southwest Side|Southwest Side, who could only afford to take home the tough, lowest-quality meat and therefore had a need to slow-roast it, shave it into thin slices, and dip it just to get it in chewable form. But today the sandwich has found a lucrative home downtown, where it clogs the arteries and delights the taste buds of the Chicago workforce during lunch break. Some of the city's favorite downtown vendors include Luke's Italian Beef in the Chicago/Loop|Loop and Mr. Beef in the Chicago/Near North|Near North, while the Portillo's chain is another solid option.

Drink

Chicago is a drinking town, and you can find bars and pubs in every part of the city. It is believed that Chicago has the second highest bars-per-capita in the US (after San Francisco). Be prepared to be asked for identification to verify your age, even at neighborhood dive bars. Smoking is banned in Chicago bars (and restaurants).

The best place to drink for drinking's sake is Chicago/Wicker Park|Wicker Park and its neighbor Chicago/Logan-Bucktown|Bucktown, which have a world-class stock of quality dive bars. Chicago/Lakeview-North Center|North Center and Roscoe Village are also great (and underrated) destination for the art of the cheap beer and the beer garden. Beware the bars in Chicago/Lakeview-North Center|Lakeview near Wrigley Field, though, which are packed on weekends, jam-packed all day whenever the Cubs are playing, and terrible. Just to the south, Chicago/Lincoln Park-Old Town|Lincoln Park has bars and beer gardens to indulge those who miss college, and some trendy clubs for the neighborhood's notorious high-spending Trixies.

Ill-informed tourists converge upon the nightclubs of Chicago/Near North|Rush and Division St. The city's best DJs spin elsewhere, the best drinks are served elsewhere, and the cheapest beers are served elsewhere; the hottest of-the-moment clubs and in-the-know celebrities are usually elsewhere, too. For the last few years the Chicago/Near West Side|West Loop's warehouse bars were the place to be, but more recently the River North neighborhood has been making a comeback. Still, the Rush/Division bars do huge business. This area includes the "Viagra Triangle," where Chicago's wealthy older men hang out with women in their early 20s. Streeterville, immediately adjacent, exchanges the dance floors for high-priced hotel bars and piano lounges.

Although good dance music can be found in Wicker Park and the surrounding area, the best places to dance in the city are the expensive see and be seen clubs in River North and the open-to-all (except perhaps bachelorette parties) clubs in gay-friendly Chicago/Lakeview-North Center|Boystown, which are a lot of fun for people of any sexual orientation.