CHICAGO A FOODIE’S DELIGHT
Sketchy neighbourhoods reborn into Windy City’s hipster haven
Travel-hungry hipsters need to know only these words when they arrive in Chicago: Bucktown and Wicker Park.
The adjacent neighbourhoods northwest of downtown have reemerged as an authentic destination for value-driven foodies and a hipster haven where streets are lined with thriving independent shops and a favourite mode of transportation is by bicycle along a former Canadian Pacific Railway path.
That railway line is now an elevated four-kilometre cycling/ hiking urban trail and park system called the 606 — taken from the first digits of the Chicago zip code.
My base in the Windy City is a lovely art-deco office building converted after a vacant period into the Robey Chicago, located at the unusual three-street intersection of Milwaukee, North, and Damen avenues. Its rooftop bar, with speakeasy-style access, affords a great view of the neighbourhood and the downtown skyscrapers.
The Chicago Transit System’s subway and train system sends its elevated blue line literally right beside the hotel, the reason why complimentary earplugs are bedside.
Across the street, an ornate old bank has been repurposed as a Walgreens pharmacy, its giant walk-in basement safe now filled with bottles and dubbed the Vitamin Vault.
That’s just my warm-up. Real exploration begins when I meet Cat Ring, whose parents once warned her about hanging out in Wicker Park and Bucktown, down the street from my hotel at Jay’s Beef.
A 20-something lifelong Chicagoan bursting with civic pride, Ring is a food and neighbourhood guide for 3-1-Chew, a play on Chicago area code 312 and one of six tours offered by the highly recommended Chicago Food Planet.
Jay’s Beef, our starting point on what will be a five-stop tour of mostly mom-and-pop eateries, is a reminder there’s more to the city’s food history than Chicagostyle deep-dish pizza and Chicago style hotdogs.
The specialty at Jay’s Beef are wet (and delicious) Italian beef sandwiches. The sandwiches, hearty and assembled with those who do physically demanding jobs in mind, have an intriguing history. Back in the day, stockyard workers were given the worst, unsold cuts of beef to take home. To make the meat palatable, workers created a slow, moist-cooking technique.
Among other stops are Sultan’s Market, which morphed from a tiny corner grocery store into a Middle Eastern deli, Stan’s Donuts (enticed to open in Chicago after gaining fame with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor in Los Angeles) and Piece Pizzeria, a pizzeria and brew pub
co-owned by rock guitarist Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick.
Along the way are neighbourhood tales of how it was spared from destruction during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but lost its grandeur during the Depression. Bucktown, so named for the goats once commonly kept, was sketchy for decades and once-ornate homes fell into disrepair until its rebirth.
“For locals, they love Sultan’s Market as it’s a neighbourhood gem with unique food, but is also locally and family owned,” says Randi Alexander, Food Planet’s marketing director. “For tourists, many love the stop at Stan’s Donuts and Jay’s Beef as many other cities don’t feature Italian beef sandwiches like Chicago does.”
Our tasting tour ends with gourmet hot chocolate at Mindy’s HotChocolate Restaurant and Dessert Bar, owned by a Chicago culinary superstar.
“Overall, I think the most favourite tasting is the hot or iced chocolate and homemade marshmallows from HotChocolate,” Alexander says. “They are amazing, but it helps that Mindy Segel is a revered chef and James Beard Award winner (for culinary excellence) and we get to share her story.”
For fans of markets, Chicago answers the call with its little taste of Paris, the French Market at 131 North Clinton Ave. The Europeanstyle food market has artisan vendors selling everything from macarons to lobster mac and cheese.
I couldn’t leave Chicago without bouncing around its downtown — literally stepping outside the wall in the glass cube 110 storeys above the street at the Willis Tower, lining up to see American Gothic at the Art Institute of Chicago, and taking both a walking and water tour along the famous Riverwalk.
These downtown experiences were enhanced by stepping into the historic Palmer House Hilton, where the iconic brownie was first made for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. That brownie recipe is still being made and served to discerning hotel guests