In my food and restaurant comparisons between LA and Chicago, so far, we are neck and neck with Chicago winning for upscale Mexican and LA winning for hot dogs.
Before we get to Round 3 with beef sandwiches, I'm broadening the competition beyond Chicago a little with a WWF (World Wide Food) Smackdown in chili. Milwaukee's Real Chili vs. Cincinnati's Skyline Chili.
Now, I haven't had Skyline Chili since I've moved to LA, which is a while now, but I can't imagine that the recipe has changed much. Both Real Chili and Skyline serve their mostly ground beef-based chili over spaghetti noodles, with optional toppings including beans, cheese, and onions. The noodles in both places are fairly soft (what? no gourmet al dente?), the cheese is shredded into long thin strands that looks like a neon yellow afro on top of the chili, and the chopped onions for both are pretty much just chopped onions.
So the real contest is in the chili itself, and here, I will have to say that Skyline wins out by just a hair, even though it was never quite spicy enough for my taste and had a slightly unique cinnamony sweet undertone. Real Chili's chili was spicier, but the fact that it was way too oily kind of stood out more. It's not Skyline's Chili wasn't oily, but by comparison, it was far less oily than Real Chili.
Now, had the competition been a three way that included San Antonio...both Real Chili and Skyline would have been put to absolute shame.
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