Yes, I miss Uno. Back in the sixties I used to go there at least once a
week with my pals. We'd all pile in this guy's 55 Caddy and drive up
there from the South Side. In those days, there were names carved in
the walls and tables. I carved mine prominently on a table in the
corner. The pizza was wonderful then: thick, savory and sweet with a
very crunchy crust. I went back there a few years ago with my kids. I
wanted to show them my name and have a pizza. Imagine my disappointment
when I opened the door and discovered that they had cleaned the joint
up. "Yes," the waitress said, "we replaced all the tables and woodwork
about ten years ago." It seems that after the franchised Pizzeria Unos
had popped up all around the country, people expressed displeasure when
they saw how worn and grungy the original was. The pizza seemed more
institutionalized as well. It was certainly not what I remembered.
Good, but perhaps not great. My daughter who lives in Chicago tells me
that Giordano's is now considered the best deep dish pizza. She FedExed
me one of theirs a couple of weeks ago. It doesn't have the real
crunchy almost mealy crust of the old Unos, but it does have very rich
sauce and good cheese. Ironically, Giordano's was on the South Side
back when I was a kid, and like most South Side pizzerias, they were
known for their thin crust pizza. Which, by the way, remains my
favorite. South Side thin crust pizza is the real Chicago pizza, and
it's far better than those hefty North Side pies. It's nothing like New
York pizza. The crust is much thinner and has a corn meal texture. The
sauce goes right on top of the crust. Then comes a layer of loose
Italian sausage with lots of fennel. Mozzzarella goes over the sausage
and it's sprinkled with a bit of parmesan. When it's baked the sausage
gives up a bit of grease, and the cheese just kind of floats above the
pie. It's cut in little squares, which makes it manageable by hand. It
would be tough to eat doing a New York fold. Very decadent, very
fattening, but very good. My favorite is at Fox's Beverly Pizza on
100th and Western. If you've never had a South Side Pizza, you haven't
lived <g>.
On Nov 20, 2004, at 9:26 AM, Bob Sullivan wrote:
The really important part of the shot is Pizzarea Uno, the best and
most famous place for thick crust pizza in Chicago! Regards, Bob
S.
On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 22:59:00 -0500, Paul Stenquist
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So I'm walking in Chicago, and I see a Lucky Jeans billboard. Just so
happens I recently shot a woman for stock pulling on a pair of Lucky
Jeans. So I think, "I ought to shoot this billboard and replace their
shot with my shot." So I do. Unfortunately, the light was awful, but I
did a workaround in my reconstruct. Anyway, here are the URLs for
their
version and my version. WARNING: MY VERSION DEPICTS A YOUNG WOMAN WITH
HER PANTS AT HALF MAST. DON'T LOOK IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE
HUMAN
BODY.
Lucky's version: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2894619
My version: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2894628
