A Chicago deep dish pizza is not for the faint hearted. Nor is it, one suspects, too good for the weak-hearted. An utterly incomprehensible amalgamation of processed meat, molten cheese, and chewy dough topped with tomato sauce the temperature of a bench seat in a Falcon 500 on the hottest day in summer, the deep dish is to cardiovascular health what the NRA is to peacekeeping. In a word, it's magnificent, and like all local delicacies it tastes best when you're stuffing evil, dripping fistfuls of the stuff into your gob in the town of it's creation and ever-lasting fame.
Chicago holds on to its history and relishes the chance either to eat it, or to show it off. Almost every tourist will take a boat ride along the dark and rippling waters of its eponymous river on the 'architectural cruise', for instance, and stare for hours at the ornate renaissance facade of the Wrigley Building, and wonder - as always - what Donald Trump was thinking when he built his ostentatiously towering pile next door. They'll walk the Magnificent Mile along N. Michigan Avenue, across the Du Sable Bridge and past the Tribune Tower, and they'll stop (they should, anyway) at Jake Melnick's Corner Tap for the best wings in town.
Chicago is rightly attached to Wrigley Field, in all it's crumbling glory (perfectly suited to the Cubs in all their crumbling glory) and it has Soldier Field, where the Bears keep bearing down and the faint whispers of the fallen circulate the great south entrance, the imprints of leaves in the thick concrete walls the most subtle of tributes in a stadium where subtlety is very rarely on display. They once crammed 130,000 fans in for a high school football game, and almost as many for Notre Dame v USC back in 1927.
They eventually dug up the old field and tore town the bleachers, built a brand new stadium inside the colonnades, modernised the thing. But it's still Soldier Field, the home of the Bears.
I walked through with tour guide Tom who liked to bark things like "There are two teams that play here, the Bears and the guys who lost" and who liked to apply increasing levels of perspective to the deeds of old 'Sweetness' himself, the late Walter Payton. "He rushed for more than 16,000 yards in 13 seasons," Tom told us. He may have been shedding a tear but his mirrored aviators prevented us from seeing.
