This will be the last post I write on my old laptop.
Eight years is a substantial lifespan for any piece of technology these days, and we’ve certainly been through a lot together. I started this newsletter on it. I wrote my very first post at Second City Hockey on it (and every article since). I’ve made birthday videos for my kids every year on it. I wrote a book on it! And I’ve spent more hours than I could possibly imagine reading and researching all kinds of things that have somehow made me feel both smarter and less smart at the exact same time.
Thanks to Pixar I’m now convinced that every inanimate object has a soul, so I went through a weird moral dilemma where I felt like I couldn’t do any research or comparison shopping for the new computer on my old laptop, but then when it was time to actually pull the trigger I had to check out on my computer because there’s no way I’m comfortable spending that much money on my phone.
I hope you enjoyed your glimpse inside my neurosis. See you at the crossroads, 2016 MacBook Pro.
The first super pop-up pizza party is two weeks in the rearview now, and it was a monumental success. We sold all 75 tickets in less than 48 hours. Every person who attended was able to try both slices of the Detroit-style collaboration between Travis and Mike (Travis’ Dr. Pepper candied jalapeños on their red pie were definitely the item of the night), as well as 1/4 of a tavern-style pizza from John. We had a secret MVP helping out in the kitchen in the form of Robert Maleski from Milly’s Pizza In The Pan (fun fact: as Robert was building one of John’s taverns, he told us this was the first time he’s ever made another pizza besides his own). But the best part is we raised over $1400 for Beyond Hunger:
Mike, Travis, and I spent all day Monday at One Lake prepping ingredients, making dough, and greasing pans:
Mike and Travis showed up early Tuesday morning to start par baking:
Then before we knew it, it was pizza time:
We’re already talking with Shawn about doing another event at One Lake later this summer, and hopefully we’ll be able to take advantage of their fantastic rooftop and drag a couple of portable pizza ovens up there.
Mike’s idea is to make a version of a Roman-style pizza called “tonda” (which led to many terrible Sir Mix-a-Lot jokes). I haven’t had it before, but it should be right up your alley if you’re into a super thin crust:
I have a new favorite pizza maker (and it’s not just because of the Propagandhi shirt):
Gram Palmateer started Gram’s Pizza out of a garage space in Toronto’s west end in 2024 after he was forced to take an unplanned hiatus from his job at a slice shop, then realized he didn’t want to work for anyone but himself anymore.
I’m fascinated by people who’ve decided they have to do something so badly that they just throw caution to the wind and go for it (which should be pretty obvious when you look back at the majority of people I’ve interviewed). I also appreciate Gram’s pizza-first mentality, which is not only evident throughout the entire interview, but also in all the details of his shop, including the signage itself:
One of the things Gram mentions that’s really interesting is that he sauces his pizzas over the cheese because he saw an old school New York pizzeria do it that way, and he liked the look of it better:
Because of Instagram and TikTok, what your food looks like matters almost as much (if not more) than what it actually tastes like these days. Scott Wiener just dropped a video in relation to that very thing, which talks about the shift in the way restaurants are buying and utilizing their pepperoni:
The TL;DR is that Cup & Char pepperoni was the original, and only, form of pepperoni until restaurants began to complain that it “shrank” too much during baking because of its natural casing, so pepperoni companies introduced the much larger “lay flat” style (which has an artificial casing), that not only covered more of the surface area of the pizza, but also probably saved pizzerias a few cents in the process. Now Cup & Char has returned with a vengeance to regain its rightful place at the top of the pepperoni throne, driven primarily by the fact it looks so much better in photos:
Cup & Char is vastly superior based on taste alone, and as someone who loves texture on their pizzas, the burnt, charred edges seal the deal for me to the point where I won’t even order pepperoni from a restaurant that uses the larger, lay flat rounds.
As 90s nostalgia continues to crash down on us like a giant tidal wave of neon and huge jeans (WTF?!?), it’s infiltrating the world of pizza on completely new levels.
Cowabunga! Pizza Pies is a new shop that just opened in March on 31st Street in Bridgeport, which is heavily inspired by all things 90s, but especially the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Cowabunga! serves large, New York-style slices and pies (which are all named after characters from TMNT), and the inside of the shop is crammed full of vintage TVs and (playable!) Nintendo consoles.
And a pizza shop called Angry Pete’s Pizza in San Diego has taken it a step even further by literally wrapping itself in the shell (get it!) of the 90s itself:
Angry Pete’s serves Deroit-style pizzas, and leans pretty heavily into the 90s Taco Bell aesthetic with their specials:
And since they were started by a native Michigander, they also carry plenty of staples from the Mitten State like Better Made chips, and Mackinac Island fudge.
I feel like we’re on the cusp of some radical changes in the way restaurants approach the reservation process.
Last weekend I went with my family to the new Wooden Paddle that just opened in LaGrange. Taken directly from their website, this is how their chain of ownership breaks down (and I love this):
Wooden Paddle was founded in 2013 by a couple of married college drop-outs with almost no restaurant knowledge and even less money.
It was our first time eating at either of the two Wooden Paddle locations, and the next day I got the simple “how did we do?” survey form most restaurants send you after you’ve made a reservation. I always respond honestly — in this case, we really enjoyed the food and had a fantastic server for our meal — and so I told them that. I then received an email with what appears to be a personal reservation link for future bookings, which is something that’s never happened to me before.
If this is a tool that’s meant to give me a sort of priority access for future reservations, I’m curious as to what exactly prompted that response. Was it simply that I showed up for my reservation? That I filled out the survey after? That my comments were overwhelmingly positive? Some combination of all of the above?
The reason it stuck out to me is because of a recent story by Maggie Hennessy (who has her own fantastic Substack) where she talked with restaurant owners in Chicago about how reservation no-shows are severely impacting their businesses.
A primary example Maggie cites is what happened to Peanut Park Trattoria last Valentine’s Day, when 52 of their reservations either cancelled at the last minute or flaked, which owner Dave Bonomi estimated lost them somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000 worth of business.
It’s the reason why things like deposits and substantial booking fees are becoming more common. And reservation services like Tock are even starting to share data that shows how often a specific user cancels their reservations, which restaurants can then use to block some of the worst offenders from being able to even book a table in the first place.
If you’re someone who likes to go out to eat and support local restaurants, you should check out Maggie’s entire story. It’s a complex problem without a simple, obvious solution, and I’ll certainly be paying attention to how restaurants attempt to navigate it as the price tags on just about everything continue to rise, and going out for a nice, sit down meal feels more and more like a luxury.
Shop Visit - Windy City Pie
Opened by Dave Lichterman in 2019, Windy City Pie is a deep pan pizza restaurant nestled in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood in Seattle.
In my interview with Dave from Windy City Pie, we spent some time digging into pizza taxonomy (ie, what separates or defines one style of pizza from another). Dave has a link to a great article about that very subject on his website that I wanted to bring attention to, so if this header is up your alley…
Here’s a pizza riddle. If you make a deep-dish pie in a square pan rather than a round one, is it something other than deep-dish pizza? What happens if you cut a thin tavern-style pizza into slices rather than traditional squares? Does it become something else? Does the world end? If a pizza falls in the woods, does that mean the crust needed a higher level of hydration?
You can read the rest of the article right here.
A couple of quick ones and I’m out…
-A great story about the history of Freddy’s Pizza.
-Epicurious challenged three different levels of chefs to make a deep-dish pizza. The video immediately goes off the rails for me when the professional chef cites a béchamel lasagna as her reference point.
-A recent pizza survey says it would take $14,677,634 dollars for the average American to give up pizza for life. Hypothetical scenarios like that are an exercise in psychological torture to me, because there’s no way you don’t immediately want the only thing you can’t have the second that money hits your bank account.
-Hot dog flavored chips?!? In this economy?!? Local Style Chips is a new Chicago snack company that creates chips with nods to hometown flavors like the aforementioned hot dog, as well as Italian beef, hot giard, and deep dish pizza.
And while we’re talking fancy chips, I was out for lunch with Travis last week when we came across these bad boys. He said they were well worth the $6 price tag, but I just couldn’t do it. If anyone has ever tried the fried egg ones, though, let me know what you thought. It’s so crazy, it just might work.
-And lastly, if you’re looking for Chicago’s biggest foods, Block Club has got you. The biggest pizza is The Giant from J.B. Alberto’s in Rogers Park, which is 2-feet-wide and 452.39 square inches.
Next up is an interview with David Choi, the founder of Seoul Taco, who recently decided to take on the challenge of opening up the Fulton Market Prince Street Pizza (in addition to continuing to operate his own restaurants at the same time).
David and I talked about a lot of things, but most important to me was getting clarification on the relationship this iteration of Prince Street has with the original restaurant’s owners, Frank and Dominic Morano.
The only way I’ll buy those Diesel jeans is if I can put two larger pizzas in them.
Great post and I want to go to Toronto and San Diego now!
Love those Local Style chips! The deep dish are really good though the hot dog ones are my fave.