Chow Down Chicago: Good Eats from the Windy City

Posts

Soul Cakes for the Dearly Departed

Halloween is one of the biggest commercial holidays in the U.S., second only to Christmas. Every year, billions of dollars are spent on Halloween candy, decorations, and costumes. This made me wonder what the origins of the holiday are, and as I did research I found an excellent recipe along the way. Halloween’s roots can be traced back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which was observed on October 31. Samhain (pronounced “sah-win”) marked the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter. It was also a time to honor ancestors who have passed on. It was believed that the veil between the world of the living and the spirit world was almost nonexistent at this time. Samhain was celebrated with bonfires and feasting. Revelers would cook food in honor of the dead and leave food outside their homes as offerings for the spirits. People would wear costumes to ward off ghosts under the logic that if you looked like a ghost, they wouldn’t bother you. Celebrators were also known t

Apple Slices: Home-Grown Deliciousness

Fall means apples, and in Chicago, apples bring to mind apple slices. Apple slices consist of apple filling between two layers of dough topped with sugary icing that is cut into squares and sold by the slice or pan. I didn’t realize apple slices were a Chicago thing until recently when Curious City, my favorite podcast about all things Chicago, did an episode on them. A listener contacted the podcast asking if apple slices are a local dessert and the experts’ answer was a resounding yes. However, you might not see them around as much now as you would have in the past. According to WBEZ, many European groups have some type of apple dessert, but apple slices are purely American Midwestern. The exact origins of apple slices are hard to pin down, but the earliest known recipe for them appeared in a 1945 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune . A 1957 article in the same newspaper stated that apple slices were Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley’s favorite dish. The heyday of the pastry’s popularit

Green River: The Chicago-Made Soda with the "Bubbling Snappiness" of Champagne

It has a distinct lime flavor and color. It was once the second most popular soda in the Midwest. There's a rock song named after it. What is it? Green River soda, of course. Chicago-based Schoenhofen Edelweiss Brewing Company, maker of Edelweiss beer, bought the recipe and sales rights for Green River from Davenport, Iowa, businessman Richard C. Jones in 1919. Jones, the owner of a candy store with a soda fountain, had created Green River several years earlier. Jones wanted to create a soft drink with the “bubbling snappiness" of champagne and decided that lime flavor was the way to go. A local teenager was the first to use the name “Green River” when he ordered the drink at Jones's soda fountain and the name stuck. During the Prohibition years (1920-1933), breweries were turning to manufacturing and selling non-alcoholic goods like soda, yeast, malt syrup, carbonated coffee and tea, and ice cream. Once Schoenhofen Edelweiss started making and distributing Green River,

The Simple Secret Behind Portillo's Famous Chocolate Cake

Chicago-based fast food chain Portillo's is known for its Chicago-style hot dogs, Italian beef sandwiches, and, somewhat unexpectedly, its chocolate cake. While it's not exactly typical fast food fare, Portillo's chocolate cake has garnered a devoted following. But what makes the cake so popular? According to the book Iconic Chicago Dishes, Drinks and Desserts , Portillo’s uses a well-known brand of cake mix plus mayonnaise. Many copycat recipes for this cake posted on the internet also use these same ingredients, so the secret is out. Portillo's got its start i n 1963 when Dick Portillo opened a fast food stand in Villa Park out of a small trailer he named "The Dog House." The trailer didn't have a bathroom and got its running water from a garden hose hooked up to a neighboring building. Today there are more than 70 Portillo’s locations across Chicagoland and the U.S., none of them in trailers. Portillo’s added chocolate cake to its menu during its earl

Tavern-Style: The Other Chicago-Style Pizza

Most people think of Chicago-style pizza as deep-dish, but that’s not the only game in town. While deep-dish pizza is popular with tourists, thin-crust pizza is what Chicagoans are more likely to eat regularly. According to WBEZ, thin-crust pizza orders outnumber deep-dish and stuffed pizza orders 10 to 1 in this city. And tavern-style is Chicago’s signature thin-crust pizza. My sister Jane calls tavern-style “the pizza of my childhood memories.” For many of us Chicagoans, this is the pizza we grew up on. So what makes a Chicago tavern-style pizza? The crust is cracker-thin, the toppings go under the cheese, the sauce and cheese go all the way to edge of the crust, and, perhaps most importantly, the pizza is cut into squares. It's called "tavern-style" because of the many taverns across the city that served this style of pizza starting in the late 1940s. The cracker-thin crust makes the pizza easy to eat as a bar snack. The toppings go under the cheese to prevent them fr

Deep Love for Chicago-Style Deep-Dish Pizza

There’s no question that deep-dish pizza is one of Chicago's most iconic foods, loved by tourists and locals alike. But who exactly invented it? It turns out the details are a bit murky. Let's begin with what we do know. The first establishment to serve deep-dish pizza was a place simply called The Pizzeria that opened in 1943 on the corner of Ohio and Wabash. The restaurant would later be known as Pizzeria Uno and is now known as Uno Pizzeria and Grill. What we don’t know is who exactly perfected the recipe for deep-dish pizza. The Pizzeria's owner Ike Sewell and his business partner Ric Riccardo are commonly credited with inventing the dish, but we don’t know for sure if they actually got their hands dirty in the kitchen. Adolpho “Rudy” Malnati Sr., who was manager of The Pizzeria, his son Lou, who worked as a bartender there, and Alice May Redmond, a cook at the establishment, are other possibilities. But whoever invented it, folks loved it, and Chicago pizzerias have