While in Chicago recently, I had the chance to eat an entire meal chosen from the selections of a Mediterranean grocery. There were spinach pocket breads bought hot out of the oven (I forgot to take a picture, but they were delicious), and this jar of salty olive brine vegetables called boleef.
There were carrots, tiny little onions, and some peperoncini, but they all tasted like olives.
And fava beans, which are apparently a real thing and not just made up by Hannibal Lector to scare children.
The Santa Rosa cookies tasted a little like fig newtons, but with a crispy, sesame crust.
The highlight was the Original Chicago Cheese.
Which tasted like the perfect cross between butter and cheese. We ate it with giant pita bread, still just a little warm from the oven.
Just before I left town, we ate at Chubby Weiners.
This place is famous for having a $250 hotdog. Most of the cost for this hotdog is the rare bottle of whisky that’s served on the side.
I ate their Chubby Dog, a tone-perfect Chicago dog (as one would hope, considering that the shop is within the shadow of an L station). The weiner itself was extra chubby, a quarter pound of thick hot dog meat with a casing that popped as I bit through it.
