Deep Dish Pizza

I don't remember my first experience with deep dish pizza.  It just is: a glorious feature of my Chicago life.  I, and my near-bottomless passion for cheese, adore it.  Oh, how I pity the lactose-intolerant!  What a bleak, featureless world they must inhabit!  But, it's not just cheese. The crust. Oh Em Gee, you guys, THE CRUST!  You eat the pizza part with a knife and fork, and when it's done, you then pick up the crust with your fingers and consume its doughy, crunchy, carbohydrate-y deliciousness with appropriate reverence.

It is so good.

My mother hates deep dish pizza.  She also disdains Indian food from Devon street. She's weird.

I was also recently told that deep dish pizza is tourist food.  Let me respond to that claim which, on its surface, struck me as not entirely merit-less. But upon further reflection it is not valid.  Lookit: my favorite building in Chicago is the Sears Tower,  arguably the most touristy place in Chicago. But I love it because you can see it from so far away.  You can see it from miles and miles and miles away, traveling on anonymous highways, and you know you're almost home.  The Sears Tower is home.

Moreover, being touristy doesn't diminish the value of something.  In Florence, I visited The David.  In Rome; the Colosseum.  I've viewed the Seine from atop Eiffel Tower.  The Grand Canyon almost made me consider the existence of God.  All of these things are touristy.  They are also all wonderful.

But if the universe has, in fact, been engineered by a benevolent deity, Chicago style pizza is its highest achievement.

I write this as I await the delivery of a small deep dish from Giordano's: half spinach, half bacon.

......

The pizza has arrived.  It is so so so good.  Life once again makes sense.  May pizza be upon you all.