Dining in Chicago

[Dark Saint Alaick]

मित्रो ! अभिषेकजी इन दिनों एक माह के शिकागो प्रवास पर हैं ! कुछ उनके ख़याल से ... कुछ भविष्य में जाने वाले मित्रों को ध्यान में रख मैं यह सूत्र शुरू कर रहा हूं ! अनुवाद काफी समय लेता है और फिर मेरी टंकण गति काफी कम है, अतः इसे मूल भाषा अंग्रेज़ी में ही प्रस्तुत कर रहा हूं, किसी मित्र को यदि किसी स्पष्टीकरण की दरकार हो, तो बेझिझक मुझे कहें, मैं हिन्दी में अर्थ प्रस्तुत कर दूंगा ! (किन्तु यह पढ़ते हुए ध्यान में यह अवश्य रखें कि 'यह 1931 का शिकागो' है !) उम्मीद है, यह सूत्र आपका न सिर्फ ज्ञानवर्द्धन करेगा, बल्कि मनोरंजन भी करेगा !

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Dining in Chicago

by John Drury

with a foreword by Carl Sandburg





TO MARION...
The Best Dam' Dinner Companion In All Chicago

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Who is John Drury

John Drury... first began his gastronomic adventures in this life at Chicago, Illinois, on August 9, 1898... in school he was terrible in arithmetic but talented in drawing... had to quit high school to help lift the mortgage of the old homestead... worked in factories, drug stores, stockrooms and department stores... continued education in Lane Technical Night School, studying English composition and French... remembers the English composition but forgot the French... fired from his job as clerk in a South Clark Street bookshop because the proprietor caught him once too often reading Keats... worked on a farm in the Illinois River valley and quit after a week because the plow horses would stop in the middle of a furrow and look at him contemptuously... later became clerk in book section of Marshall Field department store... at outbreak of World War was refused admission to army and navy because of failure to meet physical requirements... intent on wearing a uniform (being Irish), he enlisted in the 11th Regiment, Illinois National Guard, and helped to keep Chicago safe for Democracy ... in 1918 went to New York City to live in Greenwich Village... first contact with intimate side of restaurant life gained while working as a bus boy in Child's, on Broadway, near Wall Street... helped edit a literary magazine in the Village... began to write free verse poetry -- but not because everybody else was doing it... returned to Chicago and Marshall Field's book section... reviewed books for Llewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post... went to Los Angeles in 1920 where he made his first bow in journalism as copy boy on the Los Angeles Record, having been hired by Ted Cook, of "Cook-Coos" fame... the third day on the job Ted made him a cub reporter, giving him as his first assignment the duty of checking on the price of eggs... two months later he was made dramatic and motion picture editor of the Record... made several expeditions across the border into Mexico, but not for alcoholic purposes... after getting enough of the City of Angels and Hollywood, he returned to Chicago, where he became a police reporter on the City News Bureau... his poetry began to appear in the "little magazines that died to make verse free"... to New York again (1923) where, after John Farrar gave him a free meal at the Yale Club, he shipped as a messman (gastronomy, again) aboard a tramp freighter to the east coast of South America, visiting Brazil and the Argentine pampas ... back to Chicago again and began reviewing books for Harry Hansen, on the Chicago Daily News... another sea voyage in 1925, this time to London... same year saw publication of his first book, "Arclight Dusks," a volume of free verse poems ... joined reportorial staff of Chicago Daily News in 1927, after which he covered many gang murders... second book, "Chicago In Seven Days," appeared in 1928, and, since its printing, he has become a sort of "unofficial guide" to the city... last summer he made an expedition across the border to Canada, for alcoholic purposes... he smokes a pipe... has a talented wife... and a dog... has never lectured to a woman's club or over the radio... his hobby is Chicago... Carl Sandburg once wrote of him: "John Drury loves Chicago very much. It is neither an ethereal nor an ephemeral love that John has for the Windy City. John walks, rides and flies over it. He eats and sleeps anywhere in it. A thousand cops know him. So do all the reporters, and he never gets into trouble."

[Dark Saint Alaick]

FOREWORD

On reading over the text of John Drury's book one is not merely persuaded that Chicago is a place to stop for more than a sandwich and a cuppa coffee. From page to page he hammers home the evidence that cooking skill and kitchen science has drifted to Chicago from the continents of Asia, Europe, Africa and the archipelagoes of the seven seas. The ancient declaration, "Man doth not live by bread alone," serves as a literal and materialistic text for Drury's rambles. The good eater who is proud of his repertoire at the table, who is a little vain about his talent at handling a knife and fork for the guidance of victuals, must acknowledge that if he can't find a place for performance -- after listening to Drury on when and where to go -- something is wrong.
Of course there are a couple of million people in the Windy City who never go into the general run of these places. A single course of the food at some of the more elaborate emporiums would be a tasty square meal for many of these people.
There are, however, those who would like to eat first hither and then yon every day in the week, with no two days alike. Also there are the people who have drawn extra pay or had a ship come home or made a killing in a crap game. Also there are the folks who get tired of the home cooking, the delicatessen, the kitchenette, and wish an evening of change. If any of these get sore at Drury, that's ingratitude. Those who refuse to thank him are ingrates who probably happen to be off their feed, as the farmhands say.
Furthermore, there are the citizens like the present writer who have a high batting average and fielding average in the one- arm joints where the taxi drivers mention "rusta biff" knowing just whom they are kidding. These citizens can enjoy reading about where to eat and thereafter converse more intelligently about such food establishments as have personality, savor, and savoir faire.
Authorities in folk lore credit Chicago with the origin of the tale of the two garbage wagon drivers stopping to pass the time near a house into which had moved a new family. The driver who had in his official capacity served them that morning was asked what kind of people they were. He replied, "I don't know. All I know is they got swell swill."

Carl Sandburg

[Dark Saint Alaick]

We read in this thread-


Hors d'oeuvre
An Old American Custom
An Old French Custom
Around the Town
Thirty-three Gastronomical Locations
More Gastronomical Locations
Rialto Tables
Along the Avenue
Around the World
Dining in Bohemia
Americana
Among the Literati
Between Trains
Uptown and Northward
Shopper's Rest
Suburbia
Temples of the Sun-dodgers
The Great Black Way
Wide Open Spaces
Cover Charges and Minimum Charges
Tipping

[Dark Saint Alaick]

HORS D'OEUVRE


A Few Appetizing Words About the Public Tables of the Town

If you think that Chicago, from a gourmet's point of view, is nothing more than a maze of red-hot stands, chili parlors, cafeterias, barbecue stalls, one-arm joints, chop suey restaurants, counter lunch rooms and all other such human filling stations, artistically embellished with bullet holes, you're as mistaken as Columbus was when he started out on his trip to India the wrong way.
Engage in an earnest trip of exploration about the town and you will find, as with Old Chris, a whole new world -- a world of epicurean delights that you never thought existed in the City of Winds. We will admit, of course, that the human filling stations are here and in abundance, too, just as they are in New York, New Orleans, or San Francisco; but Chicago, like these other cities, can also boast of first-class restaurants that would delight the heart and palate of the most fastidious and cosmopolitan of gourmets.
There are many people, especially among those who go frequently to London or Paris, who would laugh at the idea of such a book as this. "What," we can hear them exclaiming, "dining in Chicago? Why, you canH dine in Chicago. When I want to dine I go to Paris!" These wellmeaning but uninformed persons, it develops, possess a very limited knowledge of the restaurants of Chicago and of the table delicacies to be found in them.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

It is for the benefit of such haughty innocents, both native and otherwise, that this book was written. We will show them gastronomical locations that are high up on the lists of all knowing epicures; we will point out aromatic steak houses, boulevard cafes, foreign coffee houses, hotel dining rooms, chop houses, sea food establishments, roadhouses, tea rooms, bohemian haunts, weinstubes and inns -- all types and kinds of eating places where foods are wholesome, inviting, novel and expertly prepared. Chicago is full of them if you but know their names and addresses.
For in this very same city, you may sit with sultry-eyed Arabs in one of their basement coffee houses and eat arische mahshi, with baklawa and a demi-tasse of Turkish coffee for dessert, while around you the swarthy descendants of the Bedouins smoke those Oriental water-pipes and argue politics in a strange tongue. Or you may prefer to dine with actors and actresses who live at the exclusive Blackstone Hotel just to say they are stopping there, but who sneak off to a hole-in-the-wall tea room next door where the meals are good -- but inexpensive.

Similarly, on noisy Wells Street, at the west end of the Loop, there is an old German restaurant where millionaires, who can afford the most expensive of tenderloins, come for Hamburger steak... On the other hand, the most appetizing tenderloin steak we've ever tasted, in this city where steaks come from, was in an obscure Roumanian restaurant among the suffocating tenements of the west side "Valley."

[Dark Saint Alaick]

You don't have to go to Prunier's in Paris for bouillabaisse -- that famed Mediterranean fish stew. We have it right here in Chicago -- and as skillfully prepared and delicious as that which they serve in Gay Paree. You will find it on the menu of a dine-and-dance palace on the Rialto -- of all places -- and cooked by a former Prunier chef. Nor is it necessary to go to Paris for moules mariniere or escargots bourguignonne, those other popular French delicacies; a French restaurant in an old town house on the near north side features these items for the knowing epicure. Another "one flight up" restaurant has been offering frogs' legs to Chicago for many years past.

Chicken bird's nest soup, that queer but tasty concoction made from the substance that certain Oriental birds use for cementing their nests, awaits you in any of the Chinese eating houses of "Chinatown" -- as do chicken chow mein subgum, fried fresh shrimps and kumquats. Caruso's favorite spaghetti restaurant is still doing business in a little brick house across the river on the near north side, among frowning warehouses. And in a lovely Colonial dining room in the Loop, where the waitresses are pretty and college-bred and wear crinolines, you may revel in the tastiest of corned beef and cabbage, that popular Irish-American dish.
* * * *
In a narrow, London-like side street, near the Federal Building, you may step back into Thackeray's day by dining in an old English inn, where pink-coated waiters bring out thick mutton chops and plum pudding; and in the very heart of the Theatre Sector your palate can feast on Mexican chili and hot tamales. Here, too, is a hole-in-the-wall eatery known from Broadway to Hollywood for its steaks. It is patronized largely by theatrical stars. And in a restaurant in South Michigan Boulevard you may spend a night in New Orleans, feasting on pompano and Creole gumbo and other New Orleans delicacies.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

* * * *
You may celebrate the annual Colchester oyster feast, which originated in early Norman days in Colchester, England, to mark the official opening of the oyster eating season, in the dining room of a Michigan Boulevard hotel; you may also celebrate the Passover feast of the Jews by much eating of matzos and gefiilte fish in a restaurant patronized by Jewish intellectuals and writers in the west side Jewish quarter.
* * * *
Crepes Suzette as fine as any served in France are to be had in Chicago; and those incomparable Italian specialties, veal scallopine and spaghetti with Parmesan cheese, are items to be found on the menus of many an obscure cafe in "Little Italy;" Swedish smorgasbords tempt you in the eating houses of "Herring Lane," as the north side Swedish district is called ; and the best waffles in town are found in a little Uptown waffle shop.
* * * *
Not to forget those familiar American edibles -- wheat cakes, ham and eggs, pies, strawberry shortcake, red-hots,
Boston baked beans, roast turkey, sugar-cured ham and baked Idaho potatoes -- all these you may find most appetizing in the many and varied white-tiled lunch rooms of "Toothpick Row," in the middle of the Loop. Excellent foods are also to be had in most of the restaurants located in railroad terminals and, for the shopper, in State Street department stores.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

* * * *
up on the north side, in the old German quarter, a Bavarian tavern features Sauerbraten and Kartoff elkloesse, and German potato pancakes; all the waitresses are blonde in a downtown restaurant, which, despite this, serves food as good as any in Chicago; writers who are influencing contemporary American literature foregather at a "round table" in the shadow (and amid the noise) of the Wells Street elevated; on Randolph Street is a restaurant founded a few years after the Civil War and still serving good food; the Mayor and other public officials often eat in a west side store-front restaurant, turning their backs on the dining rooms of the big hotels downtown.
* * * *
Russian goluptse, Bohemian roast goose with sauerkraut, Greek lamb chops, Polish beef filet a la Nelson with mushrooms, Filipino adobo -- foreign and exotic edibles of all kinds you may eat in this "melting-pot" of the middle west. Too, you may hobnob with the fashionables of the town in smart boulevard cafes and hotel dining rooms; with long-haired bohemians in the basement eating parlors of "Tower Town"; with actors and actresses on the Rialto. You may brush shoulders with college boys and boys who don't go to college in the Uptown district; with distinguished university professors in Hyde Park; with wealthy pork packers and sun-tanned cowpunchers of the stockyards; and you may eat chitterhngs among the happy-go-lucky colored folks in the "Blackbelt."
* * * *
All these gastronomic adventures, and more, await you in the Windy City and are yours if you have the experimental instincts of the true epicure. In this book, of course, we have made no attempt to list all the public tables of Chicago, but only those that are outstanding by reason of their cuisine, service, setting, prices, clientele and traditions. The only thing we regret is not having had the opportunity to appraise them according to that other standard of the dear dead days -- their cellars.