Must eats in Chicago?

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Where's the best pizza?

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Pop fricking corn

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Anything else I have to eat while there?

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Where can I get a good chicago dog, dog?

Steak house is Gene & Georgetti's

Steakhouse - Rosebud

Pizza - I love Piece Brewpub & Pizzeria. Its more brookly style. I don't like chicago style

If you like beer and good food go to The Hopleaf. Awesome food and great tap selection.

Purple Pig is also pretty awesome so I have heard.

Fan of Lou's here but haven't tried many others

For beer, go to Map Room and Bangers & Lace, both in Wicker Park.

Get an Italian beef sandwich, wet with peppers. Portillo's has restaurants all over town, but lots of places offer it.

Before seeing a show at Second City last March, we had dinner at a place called "Pasta Palazzo."

If you care about rankings, they are #32 of 932 restaurants categorized as "italian" on Yelp. Personally, I use Yelp to help me find places, but I don't put too much stock in the rankings.

Their jalapeno gnocchi was FANTASTIC. The gnocchi was as fluffy as a pillow. Probably the best I've ever had.

Chop House
Carmine's

UNIQUE CHICAGO FOODS

Italian beef

Johnnie's Beef in Elmwood Park (a close-in suburb that still feels like the city) is your top priority. A Johnnie's beef, juicy, with hot peppers (or hot oil only, my preference) is the best bite of food in the Chicago area, and maybe the planet. If you need somewhere closer to downtown, try Al's in Little Italy or Mr. Beef on the west edge of River North.

Please do not go to Portillo's for Chicago food, just as you wouldn't go to Chipotle to experience a genuine Mexican taqueria. Even if the food is a little better than you'd expect from a sterile, pre-fab chain, you're still not getting the real thing.

deep-dish pizza

Lou Malnati's is a great pie and a less overwhelming introduction to the majesty of deep-dish than some other examples. The original location is in the border suburb of Lincolnwood - dine there and you'll be surrounded by a clientele that never understood why the SNL "Da Bears" characters were thought to be funny.

hot dogs

Superdawg has the tastiest dogs in the city, but they are atypical in not using a Vienna Beef-made sausage. Don't worry, there are more hot-dog stands in Chicago than all fast-food franchises combined. Just look for the yellow Vienna Beef sign and you'll do OK.

Chicago-style thin-crust pizza

Yes, Chicago (as well as the rest of the upper Midwest) has a distinctive thin-crust pizza style - a yeasted but thin crust that has some give to it, with mountains of cheese piled over the rest of the toppings, cut into squares. The glory of this style is the wonderful Italian sausage, found everywhere in Chicago and almost nowhere else on pizza, in my experience. The sausage is applied in big chunks that project above the sea of cheese, enabling the sausage to brown. (Other toppings, buried under the cheese, tend to be inedible.) Marie's Pizza and Liquor (north side), Home Run Inn (west side) and Vito and Nick's (southwest side) are equally awesome examples of this style.


STEAK

Chicago has many fine steak houses, but why bother? You can get prime steak in almost any big city. Consider Shaw's Crab House for a classic Chicago steak house vibe, along with some of the country's best seafood.


WHAT CHICAGO HAS THAT LOUISIANA DOESN'T

real Chinese food
real Thai food
real Greek food
central and east European food
real Mexican-Mexican* food (There might be five hundred taquerias in Chicago serving food as good or better than Johnny Sanchez for $1 per taco. Meanwhile, dinner at Topolobampo might change your life.)

*not Tex-Mex, not Cal-Mex, not New Mex-Mex, etc.

Best burger I have ever eaten. It is a short cab ride from most hotels near Michigan ave. Good local beer selections also and your welcome. au cheval.