Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Chicago Day 4 – Vito and Nick’s


"Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch [Chicago], you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real."  Nelson Algren

I like blue collar bars and restaurants.  I don’t want to be treated like a king; my Scandinavian roots make behaviors like that embarrassing.  And I don’t want to go to a restaurant where five different preparation methods are offered when you ask for an after dinner cup of coffee, three of which I've never heard of.

I like the kind of bar/restaurant where I feel I could change places with the server with nothing changing in the flow of our conversation.  We’re just people, no better or worse than each other.  We’re familiar – the root of the word being family, if only for an hour or two.  Vito and Nick’s feels this way. 

In existence for 90 years, Vito and Nick’s was started by Sicilian immigrants as a tavern with food being added when Nick’s wife started cooking at her father-in-law’s bar.  Now Vito and Nick’s is know for the best thin crust pizza in Chicago and has been seen on Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives. 

Ordering a tap beer is easy here.  Old Style comes out of both of those taps.  Simple and unpretentious.  There is no need for 63 beers on tap here.

I order a tap beer and a sausage, black olive, and green pepper pizza.  It appears that you need to be 23 to drink at Vito and Nick’s.

It isn’t too fancy here and the pizza comes with paper napkins and plastic plates.  Blessed by the Pope, of course.  No silverware. 

Vito and Nick’s has a few policies.  One is they only take cash and another is they don’t deliver.  I sit at the end of the bar near the take-out counter and there is a steady flow of customers of all ages picking up pizzas to go. 

Notice the kitchen and the cooks in the reflection.


My pizza arrives with a simple presentation in just the right amount of time.  I can’t help but go for a crispy edge piece first and the crust has a very nice crunch.  It’s not too thin, which seems to happen too often with thin crust pizzas, and it has that perfect crunch to it.  As I was sitting waiting for my pizza one of the cooks came out and filled a pitcher with soda water.   I suspect this could be a soda crust.

I am learning that there is a reason I hear so many people in Chicago order sausage pizza.  The garbage pizza with a multitude of toppings isn’t the thing here.  The reason is the sausage.  The sausage I’ve had on this trip has been incredible.  The same is true here and I regret ordering the black olives, and particularly, the green peppers which seemed to have come out of a can.

The sauce isn’t too heavy and the cheese is light, but the balance with sausage is perfect.  The crust remains firm as I make my way in towards the center of the pizza, and I notice that the pizza has been sprinkled with dried spices after it came out of the oven.  That’s a nice touch. 

If we took the Twin Cities pizzas from Broadway Pizza and Savoy’s and smashed them together, we might be able to get close to this.

Now there is one more test that is required for a thin crust pizza:  Is it good cold?  I can say definitively that this pizza may even be better cold.

(I had three beers.  The bartender bought me one.)










No comments: