Oh, Chicago! My hometown. My heart will always be there, but I’m glad my body is far away at times like these. Barstool Sports founder David Portnoy went to Chicago to settle a dispute about deep-dish pizza versus thin crust (which he got all wrong, by the way) and while he was in the middle of the review, his cameraman witnessed what appeared to be a live carjacking and hit-and-run accident.
But before we get to the tape, let me put to rest this ridiculous argument about deep-dish pizza and thin crust. Everyone who is from Chicago knows that deep-dish pizza is something the restaurants made up to delight the tourists. Absolutely no one who is from Chicago eats it more than once a year, tops. First, it takes too long. A deep-dish pizza takes a solid forty-five minutes to cook. No one wants to wait that long. Second, it cannot be eaten with your hands. This is a fork and knife food that actually puts it in the lasagna category and not the pizza category, in my opinion. It’s really not pizza but a concoction with the same ingredients that really doesn’t end up resembling pizza in any way. It’s okay. I don’t prefer it. Neither does anyone who lives in or around Chicago.
Food travel shows that go to Chicago and sample the deep-dish make me crazy. We don’t eat that! Can you please stop saying this is a Chicago “favorite?” It’s not even close to a Chicago favorite, coming in last behind real thin-crust pizza, Italian beef, and the famous Maxwell Street polish sausage. I would put deep-dish pizza below the fast-food pizza pocket. Dave, I hate to break it to you, but you’re wrong. It’s not even close to the best pizza in Chicago. For that, you have to go to the Northside and sample Barnaby’s or Pete’s Pizza, or go to the Southside and try Vito and Nicks and Aurelio’s. But quit going to tourist sidewalk shops for pizza. Whatever that was, where the cheese was sliding off and it looked like the crust was as thick as a magazine, that’s not Chicago-style thin crust. That’s some weird imitation of it for unsuspecting people from Michigan.
But Portney did capture something in this review that is a classic Chicago experience: a live carjacking in broad daylight. When people wonder why Chicagoans are all so suspicious and distrusting and come off as harsh, this is why. This is the reality of Chicago. Enjoy your pizza and carjacking (on the great State Street, no less, right in the heart of the Loop)! And don’t forget to pay your exorbitantly high property taxes to the people who do nothing to stop it.
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