Lou Malnati's

I've never been to Chicago outside of the O'Hare airport, which I must say, has a surprising amount of neon gracing the ceilings of its thoroughfares. This past weekend, I had to go for a quick sub-24 hour jaunt to Oprah's and Mr. Prez's hometown.

Chicago is pretty cool, I'm surprised that it actually looks like a real city, unlike those fake ones otherwise known as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. Sure sure you may have people, culture, industries, and power but everything is too darn short to call yourself a metropolis. Let's put it this way, the caped crusader is never going to sail through your streets.

In the continuing stunning evolution of my dumb kid brother, T gave me two restaurant tips. One was for a deep dish pizza place and the other was for a tapas joint. The goal was to hit up both, but I'll say this for Chicago, man that place is cold. I know everyone says as much, but when I stepped out of the airplane and got a brief, harsh brush with the frigid wind, horrifying memories of Buffalo in winter flashed through my mind (job interview in college, horrendously cold day).

Instead of checking out Cafe Iberico as intended, I decided to survive on my early dinner at the LaGuardia extension of Fig's, a terrible exercise in licensing by the way. Whoever is the idiot responsible for letting the name "Fig's" be associated with the sorry bar counter near the American Airlines flights should take a serious look at his abilities to do his job. I ended up having a bad hot dog with some steaming hot, but not so amazing french fries, slathered liberally in Hellman's mayonnaise to make them go down easier. (All was fine at the bar entirely patronized by men, with me scarfing down my artery clogger of a dinner, until two well-dressed ladies sat right next to me.)

After wasting my first night in Chicago watching "Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front," and shocking myself at the tears that rolled down my grease smudged cheeks, I decided I was strong enough to brave the windy Chicago streets and have a real meal for lunch the next day.

I have a problem with fried calamari, I love it and always order it even though it's usually crap. Lou Malnati's were a perfectly acceptable rendition, nothing spectacular, but the rings weren't overcooked or rubbery in the least. I wish there would be a fried calamari revolution that would replace all of the marinara sauces with some sort of aioli dip instead as the condiment of choice for breaded, crispy calamari.

People in Chicago seem really nice, but my waitress at least, did not seem to dig little comments about too much food. I chuckled when I ordered the calamari and the pizza and the 32 oz. root beer and rambled a bit about how I'd have to roll out of the restaurant. I could see that my waitress had registered that I somehow thought this was an appropriate comment and that the expected reaction was a commisserating nod from her, but she really wasn't impressed and the corners of her mouth barely turned up in a shadow of a smile.

The individual deluxe (cheese, sausage, mushrooms, onions and green peppers) plus olives and with Malnati's famed Buttercrust!™ arrived without fanfare, but I was more than ready because during the standard 30 minute wait for it, two parties had departed, and each commented on how amazingly delicious their meal had been.

Something must be wrong because to me it tasted like a superb version of Pizza Hut, but nothing extraordinary. Perhaps Malnati's isn't much for gimmicks, but I was hoping for a real deep dish pizza with at least another centimeter or two of toppings.

It was just as well though because after eating half my calamari and half my pizza and drinking half my drink, I was barely able to roll out of the joint.

Lou Malnati's, multiple locations.