The Food Issue: Where Chicago Eats

Of the 50-plus Chicagoans whose eating habits, dining preferences, and culinary rituals we examine in this issue, there is a single outlier who holds the strange opinion that a person eats to live, and not vice versa.

We’ll forgive him that heresy for his willingness to sit down with us for a perfectly delicious breakfast.

The rest who show up in these pages take eating far more seriously. Some are consumed by food for thought: the philosophy professor who applies Aristotelian logic to the act of eating a doughnut, the rapper who wonders if Chicago pizza could become a conduit for peace. Others look to food for inspiration: the restaurant group researcher in pursuit of the perfect ramen (the place he sampled with us wasn’t too far a cry from Tokyo and Kyoto), the two chefs who pay homage to the place that paved the way for Logan Square’s rock-star restaurant scene, the food photographer who dared to crash a private dinner at Schwa.

A few Chicagoans go so far as to claim that the most rewarding meal is cooked at home, whether it’s a 12-course Brazilian-themed feast or a birthday dinner nearly identical to the one your spouse prepared 15 years ago, on your first date.

There are instances where food is viewed as a vehicle for self-preservation—taxi drivers looking for a lunch that won’t pack on the pounds, a carb counter who’s tallying for a more pressing cause—and as a means of crisis prevention: the Joravsky family’s near-disastrous road trip that led to the discovery of their favorite Mexican restaurant.

Some eaters suffer from a straight-up food obsession: be it for hot dogs or espresso, oysters or handmade noodles, tamales or a slice of pie.

And for most of them, food is a powerful tool for remembrance. A retiree revisits his childhood after stumbling upon the hot dog shop of his youth. A former baker (and current Reader deputy editor) recalls a dough recipe for different chapters of his life. Another Reader staffer looks back on the trip she took as a young girl to Al’s Italian Beef—with her mink-clad grandmother. And the daughter of a Mississippi transplant to the west side laments the long-lost recipe for her late mother’s tea cakes.

And the guy who merely eats to live? Turns out he’s got a backstory of his own—but for a second there we were worried we might not get it. The outspoken former alderman and current radio talk show host found himself at a rare loss for words when his regular waitress wasn’t on hand to fill his breakfast order.

He might not live to eat, at least not anymore. But, like the rest of us, he’d be nothing if it weren’t for food. —Mara Shalhoup