Yeah, Piece is nice…when you can get a seat. Place has been filled to the gills every time I’ve been there, but it’s been at least a year since I’ve been, so maybe things have settled, but I doubt it. The beers they brew are fantastic, too. I would go there far more often if the parking were more convenient and I could find seating. The bacon & clam pizza is the best.
When I’m not in the mood for Chicago style thin, my favorite pizza is still Coalfire. They do an East Coast-meets-Neapolitan coal-fired kind of thing. It’s awesome. I know that Spillane (the co-founder of Coalfire) recently opened up a new place called Armitage Pizzeria which is supposed to be more a straight East Coast take on pizza. I haven’t been there yet, but I’ve heard good things about it.
And, of course, there is Great Lake that pops up on these “best pizza in the US” lists, but I haven’t managed to get myself there, either.
Jumping in to say that the Drake Hotel’s Cape Cod Room is still a favorite (as of 2010, last time I visited there) and their cocktails are OUTSTANDING.
Chicago Vienna Hot Dogs are still the best … Chicago-style, from a local (not chain / sorry, Petrillo’s) vendor. I vote for any Italian Beef-Sausage Combo, WET, with hot giardiniera, as one of the best messy meals EVER.
Nah, Patrillo’s hot dogs are awesome. At least they can be reliably depended on to have natural casing dogs. In my neighborhood, most mom and pops use skinless. I can’t believe how difficult it is to get a proper dog around here (and I’m not talking condiments, as I don’t go for that “fully dressed” stuff, usually. That wasn’t the Chicago dog I grew up with. Gene and Jude’s–that’s the type of hot dog I was raised on.)
I’ve been to Armitage Pizzeria, as it’s a couple blocks from my house. I’ll give them credit for authentic ambiance - like most NYC pizzerias, it has all the charm of a dry cleaners. The pizza itself is so-so.
My transplanted-NYCer girlfriend and I recently finished a hard target search for the best NYC style pizza in Chicago, and she declared the winner to be Luigi’s on Clark Street.
I’ll have to check some of these out. To be honest, I’m not big on the regular New York style pizza (and think Jersey does a better job of it), but Totonno’s, Grimaldi’s, and Patsy’s are among my favorite pizzas in the world.
And people wonder why I live in this town. You can get pretty much anywhere fairly fast. Dropmom tried to get me to follow her and my brothers to Seattle, but just the corridor between Oak Brook and Naperville is a larger job market. And completely lacks my brothers.
And, just to gloat a little on the pizza front, Chicago was named best city for pizza again by a survey of Travel & Leisure readers. Yeah, I know it’s just one random survey of readers, but I had to throw it out there.