I'm very easily influenced by food clips on social media and thankfully I now have Christel who will come with me to try snacks and food no matter what it is because our tastes are similar enough and somehow amid crazy schedules and mountains of school work we find time to be free (or maybe lazy?) to pursue new food ventures.
LOCATION: 2121 N CLARK ST., CHICAGO, IL 60614
Just in case you're unaware, this video has been circulating not too long ago of an upside down pizza pot pie sort of dish. Chicago Pizza and Grinder Oven Co. has a pizza basically that they bake in a dish and flip out onto a plate table side. I get pretty excited about this kinda stuff and believe me, it's been on my list of places to eat since I moved to Chicago so I was pretty excited to go. One of my grad classmates has even mentioned this place before saying it's his wife's favorite spot for 'pizza' (if that's what people in Chicago wanna call it, I'm not totally convinced.) but it seemed like enough of a confirmation that this was a must visit.
So off we go up north to this place and of course theres still a lot of hype so theres a line out the door even though its freezing and we manage to squeeze inside in order to put our name down. The estimated wait time is 4 hours long but I'm starving now so thankfully theres a diner across the street and we duck in for some french fries to tie me over. Originally we planned to walk to the Lincoln Park Zoo to see the holiday Zoo Lights but its still freezing and we cross the street and go sit in Chicago Pizza and Grinder Oven Co again. We thought we would just check to see if we might get seated early but somehow the place got fuller and we still had a few hours to go until it was our turn.
Seeing as we're chickens in the cold and found a nice little spot to sit in the waiting area where it was warm we just set up camp. Christel brainstormed for finals and I crocheted while we people watched and commiserated with all the other people in line. We knew there would be a way but boy did we not expect this. It was still somehow fun to talk with strangers in the waiting area and compare when everyone arrived and how long they waited. Some people were regulars, visiting this place on special occasions for years while others were more tourists drawn in by social media.
Five hours later, we were seated and let me tell you, we ordered like the wind; super excited for food. So during our wait we could see waiters rushing around and had a pretty clear view of a table and we kept seeing people order a Mediterranean Bread which is a super flat cheesy herb-y wonderful super thin bread, so we had to order it. We also shared a small country french salad (our waiter knew us so well from the start he suggested we share a small), and we each got our own half-pounder pizza pot pie (instead of sharing one one-pounder between us - another suggestion from our waiter that we decided to follow).
All in all, everything was great. The salad was a great choice seeing as we needed something a little light and fresh with all the bread and cheese and dough. I think we both agreed that the Mediterranean bread was our favorite part of the meal and over shined the pizza pot pie. A little overly hyped, and while the presentation was cool to see them flipped onto a plate in front of us it was a little underwhelming. Christel and I had such Non-American tastes sometimes too that the amount of cheese on them was a little much and we ended scraping some off it off. I'm sure other people would disagree with us and call us crazy but that's just how it goes!
In terms of waiting, I'm not sure it was worth 5 hours but it's always fun to be able to say that we went and now we'll have a sort of 'dedicated to food we waited 5 hours in line to eat' kind of story. It's also fun to be able to talk to people in line and hear their stories and experiences with this place as well.
Somehow, we miraculously found room in our stomachs to order dessert as well. We had left over salad and bread to take home but there's always room for ice cream so we decided to order a tortoni to share. Tortoni is their only listed dessert and is an Italian frozen cream desert that's flavored with rum and macaroons and topped with graham cracker crumbs. As far as ice cream goes I've never had one that tastes like this and I loved it. As full as I felt, it was so cool and melty to eat and tasted great and I'm so happy we got it to share.
I think I would go back but maybe only if the wait was shorter than five hours and I planned it into my schedule a little more but that mediterranean bread made it kind of worth it.