I’m often in the position of introducing Chicago to New Yorkers who’ve never before spent time here. Writer friends land on a book tour; old college pals pass through for family weddings; publishing colleagues come by on business. You can have a good sense of Manhattan even if you’ve never set foot there—the movies have seen to that—but Chicago isn’t as familiar to the outsider. Watching ChiRaq, The Blues Brothers, and Perfect Strangers in quick succession won’t do a thousandth of what Woody Allen accomplishes in an opening credits sequence. So they arrive, these hapless knickerbockers, expecting a few buildings and a baseball stadium and gangsters—historical and contemporary—in the middle of the corn, and they wind up fairly confused. While explaining Chicago to these people, it’s a particular delight to watch the slow-dawning revelation that another American city might give New York a run for its money. And in describing our strange, beautiful town to them, I fully see it.
They’ve heard of Chicago dogs, and they’re eager to try the same deep-dish pizza they can find anywhere these days. But I prefer to blow minds by introducing them to giardiniera, to the jibarito, to paczkis. Chicago’s food is as good as New York’s—if not better. And I don’t even have to explain this part. The revelation is written on their faces midbite.
