I will probably be doing about six posts about Chicago, because honestly there are many pictures and a whole lot of words that I want to share about my trip. I have sort of come up with some catagories and the thing that I wanted to start with is the food in Chicago, because that is supposedly one of those famous things that you have to do when you go to Chicago. What it comes down to is three things. You have to try the Chicago deep dish pizza, which I am sure a great many people have heard about. I certainly was aware of that before I left. The other two I was less familiar with. There is a Chicago hotdog and an Italian beef sandwich.

This pizza is probably some of the best stuff I have ever eaten. It is just so good. We got this with sausage and pepperoni. As you can see there is an ungodly amount of cheese in there and it is topped with marinara sauce. You can not pick this thing up and eat it like normal pizza you have to eat it with a fork and a knife.

Next on my list is the Chicago hotdog. There are many places that serve this thing, but Jo and I were downtown, so I figured that was as good a time as any to find a place to get one. Seemed like good food while we were walking around. I actually ended up asking a man that was standing on the corner selling or giving away something for direction to find a place that served the item and was given very good directions.

For better or for worse we ended up having two of the dogs and they were fantastic. As you can see they come with some sort of hot peppers, tomato, mustard, onion, on a poppy seed bun. The whole package is complete with the addition of a beef hotdog that they cut in this peculiar way. I did not bother asking if there was an actual reason for that cut or if it was strictly for the sake of presentation.

I do not have a picture of the Italian beef sandwich, but to paraphrase the great late comedian Mitch Hedburg it was “like a cow between two crackers”. They piled so much beef on to this sandwich that I was quite content for the rest of that evening. Instead I have a picture of something else that while you can find anywhere Chicago is apparently one of, if not the largest, consumers of Mexican Coke. It is a very sweet drink with no high fructose corn sururp. Instead, they have sugar, and lots of it. We had to take the train downtown and then the pink line up to a special part of town to procure this beverage.

I do not even like Coke and I would probably drink this stuff. If you have never had it I can describe it as being so sweet that it actually reminded me of Pepsi. The glass bottle that you see in the picture has a date on it and that is when the bottle was actually made. I guess from what I was told the bottles are reused and there is tale of bottles from the 1980’s being discovered. It is something neat to get while you are there for sure. The grocery store we purchased them at was selling them for 99 cents each so it was hardly a huge cost.