Postcard from Rt. 66 Chicago
At the start of our Route 66 journey, we spend a few days in a great American city, sample some signature dishes and meet a friend
We started our Route 66 trip in Chicago. As this was only my second visit to this great American city, I thought I’d share a few impressions before continuing on to share more “postcards” from our three-week, 2,448-mile-long journey that will end in Santa Monica, California in just two weeks from today!
The city deserved far more than the three and a half days my husband Jeff and I spent being overawed by its architecture, history, museums, characters, culture and excellent food. I wondered, was it still the same place that Carl Sandburg described in the poem Chicago that gave it one of its famous nicknames, “City of the Big Shoulders”?
“Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.”
It was hard to tell, though we ate some delicious food made with wheat and pork (pizza, pasta and pork sausage). We didn’t witness any brawling, but we did visit the impressive and still very busy Chicago Union Station near the start of Route 66, watched as the famous elevated “El” train rattled by overhead, and gaped at the monuments of steel, limestone, brick and glass that give the city its fabled skyline and testify to “the big shoulders” that built it all.
A couple of tours
Setting the scene on our first day, our tour guide Heath Bristol gave us an enthusiastic introduction to the interiors of some of Chicago’s most stunning and historic buildings—including the 45-story Board of Trade building, considered a prime example of Art Deco styling; the Rookery, an 1888 structure showing multiple influences—Venetian, Byzantine and Islamic—with an interior redesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright and completed in 1907.
The fire that destroyed some 17,000 buildings in Chicago in 1871 laid the groundwork—literally—for those steel-frame, fire-resistant skyscrapers that send your eyes shooting skyward from the moment you arrive—including the very first one ever built. We saw a lot of them on a boat tour along the Chicago River, from the 360 Chicago Observation Deck of the John Hancock Tower, staring into the mirrored surface of a sculpture called Cloud Gate (aka “The Bean”) in the city’s Millennium Park, and just wandering around downtown.
Pizza, Chicago beef, hot dogs & fluffy omelets
We had been told that among the foods you must sample when you come to Chicago were deep dish pizza, Chicago beef and hot dogs. Why those three? Our architectural guide Heath had an answer:
“Chicago food is a reflection of its people in the sense that Chicago’s people historically are blue-collar, working class, manual laborers. And our food that we hold so dear…is designed to feed a working class as cost-effectively as possible.”
Of course, these dishes have become popular, not only with blue-collar working folks, but with many of us, and we were determined to try all of it—and did (diets and travel definitely don’t mix!). We sampled three types of deep dish pizza, with our favorite being Pequod’s (we also enjoyed the pies at Lou Malnati’s and Pizzeria Due’s). These are truly dishes to fuel a hard day’s work (not sure that gawking at high buildings counts!). As we were shown at Lou Malnati’s, they’re constructed in an opposite fashion to thin-crust pizzas—beginning with the cheese and other fillings on the bottom, and sauce on top.
The crusts are thicker, not spun and stretched in the air, but usually patted into place in steel or cast-iron pans that look like cake tins with straight or slightly angled sides. Pequod’s crusts feature what they call caramelized cheese, making them as craveable as the filling. Lou Malnati’s pizzas have a butter crust that I thought was also delicious.
Other taste experiences included sampling the messy but delicious Italian beef sandwich at Mr. Beef, the little sandwich shop that was the inspiration for the The Bear, which debuted on FX on Hulu in 2022, and stopping in for hotdogs at Portillo’s, famous for its Chicago-style dogs and Italian beef.
Last, but definitely not least, we visited another Chicago landmark, Lou Mitchell’s, which opened in 1923 along what became the beginning of Route 66 three years later. It was where westward travelers stopped to load up on coffee, sandwiches, drinks and other sustenance for their westward journey, earning it the designation it carries to this day: “the first stop on the Mother Road.”
When Jackson Boulevard became a one-way street in 1955, the launching point for Route 66 switched to its current location on Adams Street at Michigan Avenue, across from the great Art Institute of Chicago, where I managed a couple of hours immersed in the museum’s stunning Impressionist collection.
After Jeff interviewed Lou Mitchell’s owner Nick Thanas for his PhotowalksTV series, we had the most filling fluffy omelets (cheddar and feta for Jeff and apple and cheddar for me), plus a side of French toast and plentiful coffee.
You can read more about the 102-year-old classic Chicago diner in this excellent story from my friend Jolene Handy.
Speaking of Jolene…
A major highlight of coming here was finally getting to meet my friend Jolene Handy, the mega-talented writer behind the popular Time Travel Kitchen blog on Substack. Over the past four years, Jolene and I have zoomed, corresponded, commented on one another’s posts, written notes and blogged about each other but had never met in person. Finally it happened, and Jolene was as warm, funny, supportive, bright and generous in person as I always knew she would be. Just to refresh you about our early friendship, here’s the piece I wrote about Jolene when she was still living in the 1927 studio apartment that first sparked the idea for the blog.
We met at the Torchio Pasta Bar, started by Jolene’s brother Bill Varley, a former engineer whose love for making fresh pasta and for Italian cuisine led him to open the restaurant in 2019 with his wife Janice. (You can read more about its origins here.)
Torchio somehow managed to survive the pandemic and has become a favorite among locals and visitors alike—and it’s easy to see why. It manages to be both comfortable and elegant with a friendly, knowledgeable staff and spectacular house-made pasta, along with a variety of other dishes, including risottos, salads, sides, desserts, cocktails and wine. Jolene, a trained pastry chef, helped develop the dessert menu with her sister-in-law and handles social media on Instagram. “They call me the Insta-granny!” she said.
We stopped by Jolene’s studio apartment in a highrise with a spectacular view of Lake Michigan. It’s not the same place as the one I wrote about with the galley kitchen, but she brought along some features of her old digs, including the famous 1927 cutting board, her growing library of cookbooks and her beloved 14-year-old tortoiseshell cat, Tillie.
We chatted over coffee and Jolene pointed out her afghan-covered “writing chair,” where she crafts her seamless blogs on an iPhone as if writing to a friend. Tillie is usually curled up in her little “cat condo” next to the window, calm except when hawks sailing past the window provoke her temper.
A book proposal is in the works, but Jolene will be sharing more about that in a future blog.
We said goodbye, and I pledged to return—maybe as soon as June!
Coming next time, I’ll tell you about our further adventures along the great Mother Road!
Thanks for coming along. See you soon!
Ruth
Ruth it was such a joy to see you and Jeff here in Chicago! Thank you so much for highlighting our visit, looking forward to another visit very soon! Love from me and, of course, Tillie the Cat! 🐱 ❤️
Ruth, what a great post this is. Food culture, architecture, vintage kitchens and baking nostalgia ... a home run!