Chicago thin-crust in Washington Post

I ran across this article and thought some might find it of interest:

In Chicago, Thin Is In

Thanks for the link to the article. When I describe Chicago-style pizza to friends from out of town I talk about thin crust; I don't recognize deep-dish as the principal style you find in the city (away from where tourists hang out). One comment in the article which caught my eye was the one about the "coal oven" at Coalfire. Is there a coal oven; I didn't think it was coal-fired at all - and maybe I've missed the discussion/confirmation on the heat source.

Of course, they left out the two most archtypical Chicago thin crust places in town, Marie's and Vito & Nick's...but that's OK with me. I'm not looking for a bunch of tourists in either of those places.

I can't wait for WaPo to assign David Broder to write movingly about how deep-dish is making a "come back."

Bill wrote: I don't recognize deep-dish as the principal style you find in the city (away from where tourists hang out).

I agree. I grew up in the city (Back of the Yards and Archer Heights), and I don't think I tasted my first deep dish until I was about 13 or 14. Around here, it was always places like Vito & Nicks, Palermo's, Chesdan's, Falco's, etc. I think Giordano's was my first deep dish, and even that's not the classic deep dish, but rather stuffed. I must have been about 16 or 17 when I first ventured into Uno's or Gino's.

Anyhow, if I remember correctly from my conversation with Jay, Coalfire uses a mix of wood and coal.

Actually, reading through the article, that's not about Chicago thin crust (i.e. cracker crust a la Maries, Nick & Vito's, or any of a number of other places), it's just about the current trend of Neapolitan and East Coast style pies available here. Which is a shame, because Chicago has a real, long-running indigenous thin crust tradition.

I agree. I grew up in the city (Back of the Yards and Archer Heights), and I don't think I tasted my first deep dish until I was about 13 or 14.

I lived, for a time during high school [Tilden], at 47th & Wood, almost next-door to a pizza parlor featuring, as a "house pizza", a wonderfully thin crust with imported mushrooms from Poland (dried, reconstituted). I think I was about 18 years old when I had my first deep-dish - and it was at Gino's East, E. of Michigan Ave. on Superior St.

Is that place still there? I know there's a couple random pizza places on 47th around there that I've never been to. The Polish mushroom are most likely prawdziwki, which are, as far as I know, the same as the Italian porcini. Our family still uses them all the time for Polish mushroom dishes, especially around Christmastime. I lived right up on 47th and Damen, and my grandfather was 43rd and Wood until about 10 years ago.

I don't think many remembrances of Poland and/or the Polish are to be found today along 47th Street (between Ashland Ave. and Damen Ave.). To one side of our apartment was the Polish pizza place, and on the other was Syrena- the well-known and popular Polish restaurant where I first ate a bowl of Czarnina with klusky noodles.