The pizza puff was invented by an Assyrian entrepreneur who borrowed dough from a Mexican friend to make an Italian-inspired treat. And the mother-in-law’s name? According to The Chicago Food Encyclopedia, it’s said to come from the snack’s ability to cause indigestion-just like a spouse’s mother. Chicago-style tamales are typically made by Tom Tom Tamale (founded by three Greeks named Tom) or Supreme Tamale. Part of what makes this treat quintessentially Chicago is the tamale: it’s a commercial extruded Chicago-style or corn-roll tamale that bears about as much resemblance to a Mexican tamale as the mother-in-law does to a deli sandwich.
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Imagine a chili dog, but with a tamale nestled in the hot dog bun under chili instead of a sausage. Image: WTTW NewsĪnother unique Chicago sandwich is the mother-in-law. The mother-in-law is another unique Chicago sandwich. Watch an animated explanation of the jibarito’s origins from The Great Chicago Quiz Show, a new season of which premieres in April. You can now find it served across the country, even in Puerto Rico. Figueroa read about the sandwich in a Puerto Rican newspaper, but he was the one to popularize it in its canonical form featuring steak, mayonnaise, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and garlic oil. Puerto Rican immigrant Juan “Peter” Figueroa perfected a recipe for a sandwich made on fried, flattened plantains instead of bread, christened it “jibarito,” or “little hillbilly-a nickname for himself-and began serving it at his Humboldt Park restaurant Borinquen in 1996. “The real Chicago-style pizza is what’s called tavern-style.”) Here are a few of my favorite Chicago food origin stories.Ī jibarito uses a flattened, fried plantain to hold its fillings.
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(“It’s the tourists who think this is just a deep-dish town,” food journalist Steve Dolinsky told Chicago Tonight. (You can find the stories of some of those dishes and many more in my The Foods of Chicago: A Delicious History, available to stream any time.)īut what about all the other foods that originated here but are less often found downtown or on lists of must-eat Chicago foods? Just think about that other type of Chicago pizza, tavern-style, which many locals probably encounter more often than deep dish.
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Chicago is no exception: deep-dish pizza, the Chicago hot dog, Italian beef, and Malort are all inextricably wrapped up in the city’s reputation and famously originated here, along with Chicken Vesuvio, flaming saganaki, and brownies. New York (and Montreal) have their bagels, Cincinnati its chili, Philadelphia its cheesesteak, St. PO Box, APO/FPO, Afghanistan, Alaska/Hawaii, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan Republic, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Congo, Republic of the, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Republic of, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Fiji, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Greenland, Guam, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Spain, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, US Protectorates, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U.S.Plenty of American cities have iconic foods associated with them that tourists flock to and natives love (or love to hate).