Geoffrey Baer turns his attention to the Chicago dining mania
Clear a place on your lap for a moment -- not for a plate, silly, but for the newspaper. Let's not just eat food today; let's write and read about it as well.
Trust me, it will only enhance the appetite and make the turkey taste better.
Because there's no denying, even though the mainstream media take their lumps, and rightfully so, on how predictable and formulaic they can be, there's also something that happens when the MSM turn their attention to a particular subject. People get interested in the new, and that interest creates new interest, so things expand exponentially.
Chicago's rise as a music power in the mid-'90s is a good example, and we've seen the same phenomenon over the last few years in dining.
Chicago magazine has always had a small, reliable listing of restaurants, but when Time Out Chicago came along it forced Chicago and the Reader and all the daily papers to raise their games, soon augmented by "Hungry Hound" Steve Dolinsky replacing James Ward at WLS Channel 7 and even new TV shows such as WTTW Channel 11's immensely popular "Check, Please!" and Web sites like the LTH Forum, devoted entirely to fine dining. Taking the food seriously produced chefs and restaurants that did too, as well a discerning audience to appreciate them. Now Chicago is one of the most vital dining communities in the world.
And now Geoffrey Baer, who has already distinguished himself with a series of Channel 11 documentaries on the city's architecture and neighborhoods and suburbs, turns his attention to the burgeoning food mania. "The Foods of Chicago: A Delicious History" debuts at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday on Channel 11, and while I've only seen a short preview of the two-hour-plus special, I can already vouch for Baer's usual sense of lively detail and pleasant presentation. Think of Thanksgiving as just an appetizer for the Chicago cornucopia of cuisine to come.
"We'll get to know the people of our city through the food on their plates," Baer says, working from a script written by producer Dan Protess. And it turns out to be as good an approach as any.
Just as Baer previously followed the Swedes out Clark Street and the Germans down Lincoln Avenue and the Poles along Milwaukee Avenue and the Italians out Grand in tracing how immigrants altered the city, he now traces the influence of their foods on the town and its residents, from deep-dish pizza and chicken vesuvio to Mexican food, barbecue and Greek and Polish restaurants, right down to the present-day kosher Italian restaurant that has a sushi night.
The invention of deep-dish pizza alone proves to be the city's turbulent history in miniature. Texas import Ike Sewell wanted to open a Mexican restaurant, but the cook he found was so awful partner Ric Riccardo, inspired by a trip to Italy, suggested he open a pizzeria instead. Sewell later claimed to have come up with the idea for deep dish at Pizzeria Uno to make pizza into a substantial meal, but was it Riccardo or manager Rudy Malnati who really had the germ of inspiration? Or, as Baer and Protess suggest, was it simply conceived as a way to make use of the big baking pans the restaurant had?
Whatever, "it was a big pizza that seemed to fit our brawny image," Baer says, and it remains so today, even as the city returns to its radical roots with thin-crust pizza cooked in wood-burning ovens, as at Coal Fire or Spacca Napoli.
Yet what makes "The Foods of Chicago" is what made Baer's previous shows: his inquisitive nature and openness to new experiences. The best sequence I've seen from the new documentary finds Baer at Al's Italian Beef in Little Italy, where Chris Pacelli instructs him in the proper "Italian stance" to eat the juicy sandwich: feet back, forearms propped against the counter, leaning forward over the serving paper to keep the juice from dripping down one's chin and shirt.
Baer gets as big a kick out of that as he did tracing the development of the skyscraper. And why not? They're both enduring manmade creations originated in Chicago.
So, having devoured this article, feel free to push back from the paper, eat up and have a happy Thanksgiving.
In the air
Remotely interesting: NBC airs the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from Manhattan at 9 a.m. today on WMAQ Channel 5, followed at noon by the National Dog Show. … CBS counters by airing the parade from 8 to 11 a.m. on WBBM Channel 2.
WGN Channel 9 airs the local Thanksgiving Parade downtown from 9 to 11 a.m., followed by a rerun of the retrospective special "Bozo, Gar & Ray." … Nickelodeon begins an animation marathon weekend with the pilots of all its cartoon series starting at 5 a.m. today and finishing the day with all three "Rugrats" feature films at 6 p.m.
End of the dial: WBEZ 91.5-FM runs highlights and award winners from the Third Coast International Audio Festival at 9 a.m. today. "The Splendid Table's Turkey Confidential 2007" live show for troubleshooting cooks follows at 11 a.m. Then "Sam Cooke: A Change Is Gonna Come" and "Having a Party -- Sam Cooke's Music Remembered" air back-to-back starting at noon.
"Hambone's Blues Party" has its annual Thanksgiving show featuring the music of food and drink at 10 p.m. today on WDCB 90.9-FM. My request: Amos Milburn's "Bad, Bad Whiskey."
-- Ted Cox