Joined: Thu Jul 09, 2009 11:31 pm
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pizza_Place: Bojono's on Clarendon
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As good a place as any to put this, i suppose. A Mike Orr Road Royko column from 20 years ago: Real Chicago Pizza Isn't `Chicago Pizza'March 25, 1993|By Mike Royko.
A publicity firm that represents a corporation has sent me a large package of information about pizza. More specifically, what has become widely known as "Chicago pizza."
It begins: "There are few legends in the culinary world. There are even fewer original ideas. But then again, Ike Sewell was one of a kind.
"Fifty years ago, Ike Sewell created the original deep-dish pizza and founded Pizzeria Uno, one of the most popular restaurants in Chicago and now across the country. The saga of Ike Sewell is a true American success story, which will be celebrated throughout this year.
"We think you will agree that America loves pizza. We believe that your readers will be surprised to learn that one of their favorite Italian dishes is American, created by an All-American football player who was raised on a Texas ranch."
The publicist goes on to describe the hoopla that will accompany the 50th anniversary of the late Ike Sewell's creation.
So what I have is information from a publicist for a corporation located near Boston that now owns the Chicago restaurant that was started by a Texan to sell an American version of an Italian dish.
Well, if I may be excused, I will skip the festivities. I really don't want to hurt the feelings of the corporation that now runs the chain of Pizzeria Uno clones around the country, but I can't stand deep-dish pizza.
And for years I have been fighting a lonely battle against calling this particular food "Chicago pizza." In the words of Slats Grobnik, "it ain't."
I consider it an insult to the taste buds and intestinal tracts of Chicagoans to call this thick, heavy slab of dough and topping "Chicago pizza."
To hear them talk, Chicagoans had never tasted pizza until Ike Sewell opened his first place on Rush Street.
Not so.
When I was about 5 years old-which was a few years before Ike Sewell got his idea-my mother regularly visited a lady friend on Taylor Street.
In those Great Depression days, most mothers didn't hire baby-sitters. Unless there was a grandparent or an older sister handy, you dragged the kid along.
So we would ride the streetcars to Halsted and Taylor, then the gateway to one of the biggest Italian neighborhoods in America, and walk to Angela's flat.
After they talked and had coffee, the highlight of the day came. We'd walk down the street to one of the many Italian restaurants and have . . . of course, pizza.
Even now, I can remember what I liked best about it, besides the way it tasted.
You did not need a knife or a fork or any other silverware. You grabbed it with your mitts and chomped.
This, of course, is what has made pizza a national dish. Like the hamburger, the hot dog or fried chicken-the other great American foods-you eat it with your hands.
Being logical little creatures, kids know that anything you can eat with your hands is better than something you have to cut with a knife or stab with a fork.
But we're talking about thin-crust pizza, not the thick slabs that Ike Sewell successfully marketed to the pizza-ignorant.
If you try to pick up a piece of deep-dish pizza, you might get a hernia. Or it could fall on your lap and break your thigh bone.
And the worst part is that it is so thick and heavy, you can eat only a slice or two. And that requires a knife and fork.
Ah, but with good thin-crust pizza, you can pop piece after piece into your mouth, like potato chips, until you are in a happy, satisfied stupor.
That's why about 80 percent of the pizza joints in and around Chicago use thin crusts, which is the true Chicago pizza.
This probably surprises tourists, yuppies and lifelong suburbanites, who have spread the myth that Chicago pizza is the cumbersome creation of Ike Sewell.
They are the same kind of people who put ketchup on a hot dog. And look at you blankly when you tell them that a true Chicago hot dog should receive a dash of celery salt, the barbarians.
And despite what the Boston corporation's publicist says, Ike Sewell didn't even invent deep-dish pizza.
Simple logic requires that we ask how a Texan could come to Chicago and-voila!-decide to create a new form of pizza. We are talking about Texas, where a deep-fried boot is considered gourmet cuisine.
The fact is, Ike Sewell knew a couple of Chicago Italians named Rudy Malnati and Ric Riccardo Sr. These guys knew how to toss spices. They came up with the deep-dish concept, and Ike Sewell marketed it. Both went on to start their own pasta joints.
So if we want to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a real shrewd businessman, who knew how to regularly get the names of his restaurants into gossip columns, that is one thing.
But to call that stuff "Chicago pizza" is an insult to every potbellied glutton in this great city. We burp in shame.http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-03-25/news/9303250084_1_chicago-pizza-deep-dish-pizza-sewell
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