"deep dish pizza" news and stories

If one thing defines Chicago's tastes, it's meat. "Our food is hearty and fatty and greasy and doesn't leave you hungry after eating it," says local food blogger Marcee Manglardi. Steve Dolinsky, the ABC 7 reporter dubbed the Hungry Hound, agrees. "This is not a vegetarian town at all – they're the sad step sister here." It's all thanks to the city's history: the south side of Chicago hummed with meat processing and packaging plants, the Union Stock Yard known as the Yards, from the 1860s until the 1970s. For much of that time, it processed more meat than any other place in the world; the only perk for the immigrant workers in those often-grueling conditions was the cheap offcuts they could take home – leading to the city's obsession with hot dogs and beef sandwiches.

The reason Chicago became such a meatpacking mecca was simple: it was the nexus of the country's railway system during the industrial boom years of the 19th century. Hogs and cattle could be brought in cheaply and easily for processing – and that wasn't the only thing. "People joke about flyover country, but Chicago was never that – it was fly-through country. Because we were a hub, every good product came through here: you can read menus from the 1940s, and there were oysters on there," notes Dolinsky, "Chicago was always a must-stop if you were going across the country – every celebrity on their way between New York and LA dined at the Pump Room."

That historic openness and access to ingredients is the reason, he believes, that Chicago today is synonymous in America with Rube Goldberg-like molecular gastronomy. The love children of Einstein and Julia Child, Grant Achatz at Alinea and Homaro Cantu at Moto break rules by turning shrimp cocktail into an atomizer that's squirted into your mouth, or goat cheese turned into 'snow' using a paint sprayer. Of course, since it's Chicago, they don't skimp on meat in their menus either: only here, it's welded together with a 'meat glue' or flash-frozen on a contraption Achatz himself invented known as the Anti-Griddle.

Read on about Chicago's meaty offerings and more, after the jump...

This picture of a Deep Dish Sausage and Tomato Pizza was taken by the Vicarious Foodie and represents something of a victory for her. She's been trying to make pizzeria-quality pizza at home for some time, but without a pizza stone, she couldn't get the crust quite right. However, a recipe from Sara Moulton in which the pizza is cooked in a cast iron pan. Looks pretty darn tasty to me!

Thanks Stacy, for adding your picture to the Slashfood Flickr pool.

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Welcome to the first installment of the Slashfood Top Chef recapped, a regular post that I'll be writing following each episode this season (barring any Tivo emergencies). I love Top Chef and tend to get really into it, so the posts will likely feature my own completely biased but hopefully interesting commentary, and I'd really like for them to serve as a jumping point for everyone to discuss favorites, who's hot (Padma), who's lame, etc. So let's begin with the first episode.

First things first: lesbian couple on the show! I'm totally rooting for them, and consequently rooting against Spike, who seemed most uncomfortable with the idea. It's unclear whether more gay contestants will be revealed later, but I wouldn't be surprised. One member of the couple, Jennifer sports the same hairstyle as Richard, and both clearly knock-off last season's Dale. Richard noticed = major drama (I wish). Seriously though, there is some major girl power this season and I love it.

On to the food. The deep-dish pizza Quickfire Challenge was an obvious but fitting choice, given the Chicago setting. That said, I wasn't too impressed with the pizzas that the contestants conjured. Dale, who is already establishing himself as the confident, out-to-get-you Hung of this season, put it only slightly too harshly when he said that everyone else's dishes looked horrible. The only one I would have been really interested to taste was Richard's with peaches and syrup.

Answer: no.

But this piece in The Chicago Tribune is interesting , if only for the fact that I didn't know that a lot of people from Chicago think that there isn't good deep dish pizza outside of the Windy City area. That's not true. For example, in the Boston area, deep dish pizza has been around for decades and is as popular here as thin crust pizza. In the mid-80s I worked at a pizza place and all we sold was deep dish. I've found that much of the pizza that people rave about in the big cities is actually overrated, whether its thick or thin crust. But there's a lot of good pizza out there.

I like both deep dish pizza and thin crust. It all depends on what mood I'm in.

Dear Domino's,

I'm not going to lie to you. When it comes to fast food pizza, I'm a Pizza Hut guy. Actually, before I even get to calling Pizza Hut, I'll go with one of the two local pizza places in my town. They're two of the best pizzas I've ever had anywhere, and I usually go with one of them. But last night I had this craving for one of your deep dish pepperoni pizzas. Plus there's a Domino's right next door to my apartment and I didn't feel like going across town.

So I went to you web site and almost ordered the pizza online. Not because I'm lazy, but because I've never ordered a pizza online before and thought it would be fun. I decided to just walk over because it's only about 33 steps from my front door. But while I was on your site I noticed something that troubles me.