Pizza, pizza

Last week when I was in Chicago, my friend Dennis and I went to Leona's Pizza for some authentic Chicago pizza. No, no, no, it was not that overstuffed, leaden, deep dish stuff. It was the pizza I grew up with back before Pizzeria Uno started with their publicity campaign to convince everyone that a five inch high, doughy pie full of cheese, was Chicago pizza. For decades Chicago pizza was a very thin, round disk, covered with tomato sauce, cheese, little globs of sausage, and then sliced into squares. Besides the thinness of the crust, the cut is the most important part, for that allows little triangular pieces at the corners, which are more like a cracker with pizza toppings on it, my favorite part.

So this past Saturday, fresh from my trip to Chicago, I was craving that pizza. Trouble is, you can't get it here in Florida. We have plenty of greasy New York pizza, and of course all the bland chain pizza places, but no Chicago pizza. So to assuage my cravings I ordered from a place called Humpy's. As pizza places go, Humpy's isn't so bad, but it isn't my Chicago pizza. When the pizza arrived I flipped open the box, and dug in. What I got was a mouthful of chewy, spongy crust, with flavorless pepperoni and cheese. The sauce was good, but it couldn't overcome the letdown of knowing I wasn't getting what I craved.

Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Domino's, none of those are pizza, and I refuse to eat that crap. So I keep trying local pizza places here, hoping that sooner or later I might find what I'm looking for. Either that, or make more trips to Chicago.