Therapy

It's too easy for me to forget that this blog exists. I'll get on a roll for a few months, build up some momentum, then "reward" myself with a "break" and subsequently disappear for half a year or more. I can't say for sure why I drop off like that. I enjoy writing. I see putting my thoughts down and sharing them as a healing act, and when the going inevitably gets tough, this is the logic that I'll use as a prod to jab me back in to the game; but said logic means nothing to whatever sick entity was put in charge of scripting 2016. This year has been nothing but one devastating vicissitude bleeding with an almost competitive malevolence in to another. The reflexive result is my subconscious defensively extricating itself from any true participation in the world.

This is heartbreaking for me. Going out in to the world is what I love. Going to desperate and impractical means to enjoy life's most premium experiences is what I do. I use my insistence on participation, on not being bored ever, as the only real blueprint for escaping my blistering depression. It feels damn near impossible, however, to run tantivy in to the nurturing and inspired arms of cuisine and revelry when the hurdles I have to leap are the bodies of legends and friends maimed or killed off by illness at an age where most of us are entering our prime, my dead dog, and a formidable and growing golem of small personal defeats. The idea of spritzing in a few curative instances of luxury just feels wrong.

Defying the mandates set forth by this shitty year to stay miserable, myself and a sizable group of friends who, for their own reasons are mutually eager to bid adieu to 2016, recently set out to Madison for a midweek trip. The plan was simple enough: dinner at Forequarter followed by Car Seat Headrest playing at the Majestic. As it turns out, simple wouldn't do. The alchemized effect of this specific group of people, our commensurate measures of frustration and irrepressibility culminated in a full-scale takedown of Forequarter's menu (which it just so happens was otherworldly in it's deliciousness) and enough wine to provide the foundation for at least one near black out. After filling up on puffed beef tendon, seared scallops, steak, chicken, lamb... literally the entire damn menu with several items doubled up on plus desserts, we made our way to the show. I walked out in to perfect weather, ethereally drunk and full enough to be stoned; and if you can empathize with the latter of those two states of intoxication, we can almost definitely be friends.

The rest of the night hovers in a flickering ether for me. Fleeting moments of don't-give-a-fuck fun leading up to sloppily passing out on a friends air mattress. I closed my eyes with the spirit of a 19 year old, waking up very much in my thirties with horrible pain in my joints and head and GERD intense enough to produce a panic attack. Ultimately, I emerged from this self-induced chrysalis/iron maiden hybrid refreshed. As grey as life had been leading up to that night, was immediately hellish after, and lame as it has been ever since-it was proven to me over the course of those several hours that escape is possible.

Obviously this isn't meant to be a review of a restaurant or even a narrative of my evening. This is a reminder to me and whoever else it might resonate with that dread doesn't have to win. Fight like hell to keep the jaws of circumstance from snapping down on you; but if you start to feel consumed, it might be better to blast your way out with dynamite than negotiate with nightmares you don't always have control over.  Since I started writing this another one of my friends passed away, and another person who I didn't know personally but was close to many of my other friends also died. It's more a reminder than anything for me to continue to get out and actually enjoy life instead of letting the downsides (not matter how drastic they may be) beat me in to submission. More to come. 

Tommy and Lisa's Best of Ten-Pho

It Begins!

This blog hasn't had much of a focus in the way of actual criticism; and up until now I haven't had really anything resembling a restaurant review, spare the cloying panegyrics I wrote out to give unabashed praise to a couple of places I ate.  I believe that the lesser meals should be documented as well.  This isn't to say that this project is about purposefully seeking out "lesser" meals, because it's not.  It is about trying different variations of essentially the same dish and discussing them whether or not the meal itself is an absolute home run.

My partner in this project is my good friend Lisa Elliot. Lisa is actually the one who should be given credit for the Best Of Ten jumping off at all, as she approached me with the idea to try and eat every bowl of pho Milwaukee has to offer and then review it.  After a bit of discussing and tweaking we decided that instead of delving in to a near-infinite ocean of pho, let's apply the same logic to several different types of food around the city, ten at a time, then rank them.  Lisa agreed to the plan on the basis that at the very least start with pho. Given that we are in the midst of the shittiest and grossest part of winter,  I had absolutely zero objection to that plan.

Lisa and I have two very different attitudes when it comes to pho.  I'll be honest, all the mania surrounding a hot bowl of noodles has always felt a little forced to me.  Don't get me wrong, I understand the appeal of the kind of comfort it brings.  Chicken noodle soup, pho, ramen.. whatever else, all of these things have provided me great joy. This is especially true during the long months when city of Milwaukee takes on the barren hellscape of Winter, which is at it's worst just before spring meekly peeks it's head and slowly-but-surely thaws us out.  What I have always failed to grasp is the feeling that these foods are somehow beauty and complexity epitomized and transfigured in to a bowl of holy excellence. I'm not saying people are wrong for feeling how they feel, but I've just never been moved close to tears by these kinds of pho. Recently one of my very best friends told me that he would rather have a big bowl of ramen than pizza almost 100% of the time. Hearing that made me violently angry.

One thing specific to pho really aggravates me.  The ruthless onslaught of puns that the word provokes really gets under my skin. Obviously I know I'm poking the bear to reveal such a silly pet peeve, but I can tell you right now that if you're tempted to tell me to "pho-ck off" or "go pho-ck myself" that you're number 30,000 in line. It's one thing for a bunch jerks to pick the low hanging fruit that is the sound that the monosyllabic soup makes, but restaurants are actually jumping on this idiotic bandwagon too.  If you name your restaurant "What The Pho" or "Absolutely Pho-bulous" or *shudder* "Pho-Shizzle" you're basically screaming at me that your food sucks and that you don't take it seriously; it also honestly feels disrespectful to me.

That all being said, I truly do enjoy pho. I may not swoon over it, but knowing what I know about it's components, it should always be objectively desirable. With that in mind, and in the interest of fairness, I'm going to attempt to enter in to this with a sense of amnesia. Everything I know about pho is gone and the stigma has been erased.

My far less cynical counterpart is a much different person than me when it comes to many things, including opinions surrounding pho. Lisa doesn't work in restaurants at all, meaning her gluttony is 100% naturally occurring and is in no way spurred by her career. Lisa works as a nurse in an ICU unit in Milwaukee, meaning that everything I have to say that sounds like a complaint (especially when it comes to my job) should pretty much be disregarded with extreme prejudice. On top of that, she's a fanatic (pun deflected) when it comes to pho. I would go as far as to say that Lisa's enthusiasm toward the dish borders on delirium.

We hope that our combined perspectives will reduce in to something resembling a healthy perspective towards pho.  I will archive our meals on this page and update it continuously as our journey in to the world of Milwaukeean pho develops.  Join us!

Hipsters: Gastronomy's Make Believe Pincushion

The culinary world is undeniably and inextricably associated with competition.  From farm to table, cook to writer, kitchen to keyboard it seems like every element of dining has to have some heir of megalomania attached to it.   This isn't always a bad thing, of course.  Assuming it's escorted through the proper channels, rigid competition plus self-inflation can equal excellence; however as with any industry, you don't have to dig too deep to find the service industry's stupid.  It's easy to pick apart undeserved egos and call out backbiting harbingers of gossip that pepper the world of gastronomy, but, that is not unique to gastronomy alone.  I want to talk about something symptomatic of deluded and painfully basic, non-dimensional thinking. This thing is truly alarming, given it' permeation in an arena built on creativity and culture.  That thing... is hipsters.

I know, I know, I know... I just said that I wanted to write about something unique, and that the word "hipster" is about as ubiquitous as the word "chef" when discussing food, but that's exactly my point. That very ubiquity has disintegrated whatever a "hipster" is in to complete ambiguity; and yet, as if it means anything, that stupid word keeps popping up.  "Hipster" has become nothing but an amalgamate of what people consider quirky and different.  Fact: I had to re-write that sentence like fifteen times because I couldn't find a satisfying enough description for a label as vague and general as what I'm talking about.  Essentially think of anything younger than 60 (I mean, Bourdain is a hipster, right?) then give them literally any amount of intellect and/or individuality and there you have it, your hipster.
So why does this bug me so much?  Why do I find it harmful?  That's a good question, and if one wanted to simplify, they could probably deduce that my generally irritable nature is at the heart of this entry.  Beyond that and more specifically though is that my sour mood is easily provoked by boring and unnecessary hatefulness; and let's face it, the word hipster doesn't conjure anything particularly positive in your mind.   If you closed your eyes and were told to imagine a hipster, you would probably imagine a person reduced to a mascot used to represent everything you think is wrong with young people these days.  That's because "hipster" has become the official brand for pretentiousness and pseudo-intellectualism.  The complication is that everything and everyone that is not painfully normal is effectively a hipster, and therefore a pretentious pseudo-intellectual.

Hipster making the most pretentious pizza of all time.

This insipid/insidious thought process annoys me to my core when it pertains to restaurants.  Reading Yelp reviews can become a practice in masochism if you dare venture in to anything that's been independently opened in the past decade.  Seriously, no matter what city you're in, type the "H" word in to the search bar and watch the paranoid accusations fly.  Milwaukee alone has TWENTY TWO pages worth of results and few-and-far-between are the entries where "hipster" affiliated with anything positive.  The shit of it is, is that these accusations are often being hurled at restaurants my friends work at, eat at, and even own.  Those "pretentious bearded hipsters" are quite often parents who don't care about anything besides giving you food or getting you drunk.

It seems like nothing is safe from the branding iron of the insecure and out-of-touch.  Ramen, sushi, pizza and hot dogs are all served in places in Milwaukee that I've seen described as alienating in their hipness. If you think that slice of pizza you're eating is going to somehow taste worse because some punk rock kid made it for you, it isn't because that kid's fault, it's because you're either insecure, an idiot or both.

This probably sounds as insecure and accusatory as the people I'm bashing, but it's difficult to broach this subject in a non-hostile manner when I'm marginalized right off the bat based on glasses or a t-shirt or whatever.  This isn't a blanket defense of every young person who has an offbeat aesthetic.  Some people are pretentious assholes, some of them own crappy restaurants who make lousy food and have horrible service.  What this is a defense of is someone's right to be different without having that difference be the sole identifier for who they are.  That thinking stunts progress and discourages true innovation.  This is also a proclamation that doling out extremely general judgements on anyone by applying blanket titles to them is a really lame way to go through life. If you can't criticize in a specific and constructive way, you should probably consider whether or not you are capable of that criticism in the first place.

I should mention that I realize I'm not actually marginalized. I revel like a fat hog in the most privileged sector of society probably on the planet.  Besides, factually speaking, as a heavily domesticated 29 year old Wisconsinite/unabashed Taylor Swift fan with very little discretionary income I've dipped far out of the orbit of anything anyone could consider hip.

Oh and one last thing. You know that painfully hip couple up there? That's my mom and dad, holding my brother who is now 33 years old.  If the body of water that is hipsterdom is three decades deep, whatever "hip" is probably needs to be redefined.

Family Dinner: Cheese And Wine Valentine's

The spread

Last night's family dinner theme was Cheese and Wine Valentine's.  Family dinners pretty much always occur on Sundays so missed Valentine's Day by one day.  This is actually a beneficially fortuitous circumstance given the amount of regular attendees (myself included) are embedded in the service industry.  Successfully taking off Valentine's Day, especially one that lands one a weekend, is pretty unlikely.  On actual Valentine's Day my lovely wife and I went and had a very nice romantic pizza lunch and then I went and had my ass kicked at work for nine straight hours.

Ass kicking foreseen, I decided to schedule a less labor intensive dinner for the following day.  Still wanting a romantic vibe, we hosted a cheese and wine themed "dinner".  This was less of a dinner and more of an array of snacks, as pictured above.  Apples, crackers, fresh vegetables, breads, spreads, figs, desserts and of course a vast selection of delicious cheeses festooned our dining room table.  Accompanying these ambrosial assemblage of treats was enough wine to fill the bottles that in turn fill two large bags which are now sitting cozily in the recycling bin outside of my house.

The night transitioned as it usually does.  First mingling, then drinking (this goes on until the night ends), then consuming way too much food, then gratuitous immaturity in one form or another.  Last nights ridiculousness apexed in the form of a Mad Libs session which really everyone in the room should be simultaneously ashamed and proud of.  After a few more hours and a few more glasses of wine I hit the bed hard and woke up to a pretty merciful stack of dishes to do. Mission accomplished.

Panic At The Dish Pit-Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the Service Industry

Preface:  I work in a restaurant and I am diagnosed as having generalized anxiety disorder with panic attacks.  This is just my story.  I am not an authority on anything psychiatric.  I wrote this because I know I'm not alone in dealing with this frustrating and complicating problem. I also wanted to write something because the instinct anxiety and panic breeds in to a person's brain is to be ashamed enough of their disorder as to internalize it.  That strategy not only ignores the problem, it exacerbates it.  Anyways, here it is.
--

It happened again last night.  I felt my stomach twist and noticed my nausea.  I say "noticed" because at that point I'm not sure if I just became nauseous or if I have been for hours, or maybe all day. Either way, that shitty feeling I'm just now noticing has now instantly become an obsession.  The checklist process in my brain kicks in.

"Could this just be the coffee I drank earlier?  Am I maybe a touch hungover? Oh wait, did I even drink last night... oh my god people often experience nausea right before a heart attack."

Cue full on panic.

"Shit, people always get really panicky right before they have a heart attack too. Is my arm going numb?  Why are my hands shaking so hard?!"

It should also be mentioned that at that exact moment I was driving on a freeway that was limited to one lane thanks to construction.  As always, my anxious mind fixated on possibility, not probability. It seemed, at that moment, completely reasonable that my tire was going to blow out at the exact moment I was going to have a stroke.

I had just delivered a pizza and was rushing back to the restaurant I work at when this all kicked in.  Making matters that much more urgent seeming was my bright orange "low fuel" sign blaring in my face.  Usually this half inch by three quarter inch light isn't a big deal, but with panic tearing through my brain it felt oppressive.  I stopped for gas and pumped something like $6.34 in to the tank because standing in one place for any longer felt literally impossible. Then I sped back to work.

The series of obstacles rearranges itself now that I'm back at my place of work.  The benefits live symbiotically with the negatives.  Yes, I like my coworkers and understand they know who I am and what I deal with and are supportive; which in turn makes me paranoid about alienating people who I care about.  Yes, it's a pizza restaurant and not heart surgery so it's not categorically urgent; but it is implicitly rapid paced and requires a rhythm and degree of proficiency in order to be performed with even a marginal level of competence.  That rhythm, that coordination, can't exist when thanks to some evolutionary misstep, your adrenal gland is misfiring like a goddamn uzi and your heart is palpitating and your eyes are dilated so all of the halogen lights suddenly morph in to white dwarfs and blind your eyes.

Eventually, panic subsides.  My heartbeat returns to relative normality and my hands regain control. A short time after that, after I've regained my breath and stopped hyperventilating, my muscles loosen and I can return to standard operating mode.  Panic seems to strike everyone on different levels and for different amounts of time.  Generally my worst episodes last anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. Nine times out of ten I can detect it approaching and calmly motivate myself out of it by reminding myself that it's happened tens of times before and nothing truly awful ever happens.  When that doesn't work, all bets are off.  I've had to step outside mid-rush just to prevent myself from blacking out.  Anyone who's ever worked in a restaurant knows that a move like that is borderline sacrilege, something that should only be reserved for someone who thinks they are about to die. Believe me, that's about where I was.

I want this entry to be more than a self-pitying narcissistic rant about how difficult my life is, so I thought I'd write some advice to the young anxious individual who's in love with the idea of the restaurant life.  Truthfully the solution to all things anxiety, be it yours or someone else's, can be found in honesty. As a concept, honesty is something everyone is familiar with.  What people aren't familiar with is the raw, uncomfortable feelings that often accompany it.  Let's take an honest account of what a person with an anxiety disorder has to deal with if they want to work in the service industry.

First, the service industry is intensely competitive.  Whether your back of house, front of house, serving, cooking or whatever, you're always trying to maintain your rank or move up.  Yes, the camaraderie is real and you can find satisfaction like nothing else an ice cold shift beer with your co-workers after a brutal shift, but the operative word in that sentence is still "brutal".  Make sure you step in to life in the kitchen knowing somewhere along the line you will be stepped on.  It's difficult for the catastrophically-minded individual to operate in an industry where the traditional modus operandi for shaping young men and women in to respectable cooks is aggressive and repetitive negative reinforcement. This isn't to say that everyone who serves as a mentor in a kitchen is a heartless bully, but it is to say that you learn quickly that you have to totally bust your ass to be a good cook.

Secondly, the powers that be do not give a shit about you.  This is true in almost any profession, but the level of ambivalence doled out to kitchen workers is extreme.  Don't count on finding yourself in a position that awards you benefits, a 401K or anything else that might serve to protect you should the worst happen.  Think about basically every minor pitfall you could endure and realize that most of that shit won't get treated so long as you are working in kitchens.  Hernias, damaged teeth, broken feet, wildly infected burns, the list of things i've seen go untreated by kitchen workers who simply don't have the means to deal with them goes on and on and on.  This doesn't even begin to touch the gauntlet a young person seeking mental health must go through if they don't have benefits.  Our society basically damns mental illness right out of the gate.  Whether you're a normally functioning individual who happens to have panic attacks like me, or the paranoid schizophrenic who is a legitimate candidate to hurt themselves or someone else, you're essentially thrown in the same boat. Every free clinic i've ever stepped in to, every exhausted and overwhelmed doctor who's ever checked me out, have all concluded almost instantly that I'm seeking drugs and can't be trusted.  It should be noted that I receive that level of suspicion even though I'm a white male with zero prior convictions, far and away the most privileged sector of society. I can't even imagine what it's like for other people.

Thirdly, that stereotypical fun fast kitchen lifestyle is hard.  This seems like it goes without saying, but honestly so many of those youthful, self destructive things that make working in a restaurant romantic are the things that completely work to inflame anxiety.  Coffee? No good.  Cigarettes? Nope. Alcohol? Bad bad bad.  Basically anything that dehydrates you and/or speeds your heart up is more or less a recipe for disaster if you're prone to panic.  Maybe it sounds silly to consider these things at all, but look at the other two elements I wrote about up there.  Kitchens start to feel like families, of course you'll want to drink or have a smoke with your co-workers.  And if nicotine and alcohol (or other things) don't sound appealing based on that alone, then just wait for the harsh realities of life to catch up.  When I have a lousy paycheck or a hard day at work, I don't want blended wheatgrass to get me through the night.

Again, I'm just one person with one perspective.  Nothing I am saying should be taken as a general truth and nothing I am saying should be given any credit from a psychoanalytical perspective.  I am writing what I would like to have been told when I was 17 and got my first job washing dishes.

None of what I'm saying is meant to discourage anyone from getting involved in working in kitchens. Truth be told, if I could do it all over again, I'm not sure I'd change a whole lot about the trajectory of my life.  Kitchens have an amazing and empowering feel to them.  It's honest work done by honest people.  Furthermore, generally the people who stick around in kitchens do so because they are creative and interesting individuals who have fallen in to the margins of an otherwise uncreative society.  I spent several months wringing my hands and feeling embarrassed before I told my coworkers what I was dealing with, and the result? Assurance and support, through and through.  One fellow employee even empathized and confided a similar struggle with me. Yes, my panic can be frustrating at times, sometimes even crippling, but I can't say assuredly that my reality would be much different if I worked in retail or some sterile office setting.  Go in to everything you do with honest expectations, prepare for the worst but always, always hope for the best.

Four Hours And Fifteen Minutes In A Different Dimension: My Dinner At Alinea

If you're reading Rough Chop it's for one of two reasons.

Reason One: You're a fellow food geek.  If that's the case, you've seen the taffy apple balloons and the majesty that is hot potato, cold potato.  You've seen the YouTube clips of Chef Achatz deftly constructing desserts for his guests on their table, moving and creating in equal parts rapidity and precision.  If you've been to Alinea then you know the emotions that separate online spectator from actual diner; if you haven't been then you probably are the walking embodiment of anticipation I was a week ago, just waiting for your chance to experience what really goes down at 1723 N. Halsted Street.  Either way you don't need anymore food porn, so I won't be delivering any.

Reason Two: You know me.  If that's the case I've probably already harangued you with details about my experience.  Some of you have lectured me on the "insanity" of investing so much time and money and energy in to a meal.  Some of you have indulged me with relative disinterest as I prattled on about all the twists and turns my epic meal took over the sixteen courses I had the pleasure of experiencing... thank you for your patience. Still others of you relished in the details and geeked out with me about the taffy apple balloons and majesty that is hot potato, cold potato; which are realistically the only two courses we've shared.

It could be a combination of the two reasons.  Either way, you don't need to see another article with a course-by-course assault of pictures laden with superlatives and whimsical praise.  Don't get me wrong, I am packed to the gills with an almost maniacal level of appreciation for everything Grant Achatz does.  The man is worth every accolade, ever Michelin star, every bit of lionization that he's received.  He is a genius who's restaurant gave me, unequivocally, the greatest meal of my life thus far. But I don't want to simply review Alinea from the perspective of a diner, because that wasn't what I was when I was eating there.  Alinea was much more than that.

I want to begin the review portion of this entry with a preface that contains one overarching sentiment that I want to be considered throughout the rest of the post: to each their own.  It feels a little funny to begin discussing a revolutionary and game changing restaurant with what could be considered a trite and played out platitude, but I think it's appropriate.  Alinea may not be for everyone, and I understand that.  It's certainly not my job, as a guy who lives in dual-income household with no kids, to outrightly oblige anyone to spend hundreds of dollars on a meal.  That being said, I do oblige absolutely everyone to consider what's at stake by categorically shunning experiences like this one out.

The solitary shared experience for all Alinea diners. The napkin.

Preface aside, the meaningful part of my review is essentially this: what I experienced at Alinea in a sensory sense was unprecedented up until the moment it happened, on almost every level.   There were so many tastes, smells, textures and ideas that I had never even approximated in my life that by the tenth course I felt literally stoned.  Try as you want to analyze the flavors as they happen, predict the next move by the kitchen or the waitstaff, guess in what capacity the next course will arrive or even come close to what it will taste like; you will run in to failure at an overwhelming capacity over and over again.  Alinea is not about analyzing, it is about experiencing the ride as it happens.  Even if words could do the meal justice (they can't), the ever-evolving nature of the establishment wouldn't allow it to be duplicated, so there is literally almost no point in reflecting my personal experience on to you, because it won't happen for either of us ever again.

Hence my urgent suggestion that you consider what you'd be missing if you never invested in an experience like this.  The willful forfeiture of non-replicable experience feels like a tragedy to me. Simply describing Alinea to another person is like describing a color they've never seen before, it's simply something that must be experienced in order to be understood. Perhaps affording yourself a meal like this seems ludicrous if you reduce the logic down to "it's just food", but that logic is dangerous.  That same train of thought would suggest that Beethoven or Miles Davis are just musicians, not giving any credence to the complexities and genius that set them apart from the pack.  It's that genius and those complexities that forge the enormous chasm between what simply consuming food and what Alinea is.  Again, it's not for me to tell you what you or anyone else should invest your money and time in; but if you are going to give yourself a fair assessment of what "worth it" is, attempt to consider everything that a restaurant like this is.

Owen and the Incredible Taffy Apple Balloon Montage

I leave you with a couple pieces of advice if you do decide to take the plunge and purchase tickets to the best meal of your life.

First: go with people you truly love, who you know will appreciate what's going on.  Of all the pictures I took that night, the one headlining this article is my favorite.  My wife smiling, a glass of chablis in one hand and chopsticks used to pluck gurnard lionfish off of a plank of a barrel that was used to age brandy, and later fish sauce.  One of the funnest parts of the night was watching her and my friends faces as they explored the uncharted frontier of flavor that I myself was enjoying for the first time ever.

Second: Don't overthink it.  Don't linger on anything too long. My specific menu took four hours and fifteen minutes to get through but that time flew by.  The menu is impeccably paced, and part of the fun of everything is letting yourself be surprised every now and then

Third: Don't consider the expense, at all.  Once you click "purchase" just let any financial tension drift away.  The ticket system is implemented to make the actual dining experience completely stress free.  As soon as you get to the door, just let the restaurant go to work.  Money comes and goes, once in a life time experiences are titled as such for a reason

Fourth: Reflecting the third thought-if you are a drinker, GET THE WINE PAIRINGS.  I can't stress enough how much an additional $150.00 investment enhanced my dinner.  Again, if you've already made the investment, I highly highly recommend going a little further.

So, that wraps up my thoughts on dining at Alinea.  I will concede that eating such an establishment may not be for anyone.  That being said, and assuming you have the means, if you've already decided that it's not for you, I implore you to take a step back, consider what you are choosing to miss out on. There are a whole lot of things happening in that unassuming building in Lincoln Park, I'm incredibly grateful to have been a part of them.

Memories In Gustation: Primo's Pizza (Rockford, IL)

Rockford Illinois... The birthplace and hometown of my father, the third largest city in Illinois, and also ranked by Forbes as the third most miserable city to inhabit in America in 2013.  As evidenced by the photograph below, Rockford struggles when it comes to finding pride in itself.  The culinary landscape has improved vastly in the past half a decade, but still exists amorphously and without that certain defined feeling of confidence or permanence.  

This is real.

This story isn't about the restaurants who are accountable for shouldering the weight of changing the game anyway.  It's not about a young restauranteur who is eager to bring light to the bleakness of Rockford's decaying landscape.  This isn't about the intimate beer bar that has a selection which rivals that of any place in Milwaukee or Chicago that I've ever walked in to.  This isn't about the ambitious and ever changing farm-to-table restaurant that's always packed to the gills on the weekend. Rockford has all of those things, and by no means is this post meant to diminish all of the awesome things they are doing, but Rockford also has Primo's Pizza.

My parents split up when I was very young and every other weekend my brother, my sister and I would head down to Rockford.  Initially my mom and dad would meet half way in Delavan, Wisconsin for the exchange. After about a decade of that my brother turned sixteen and took on the responsibility of driving us, blasting ska the whole way down.  It was about that time in my life that my first memories of Primo's are from.  In fact, I have a particularly fond memory of a 15 year old me waking up from a nap at my dad's house to an empty home and a note with a ten dollar bill and instructions to go get a pizza for my self.  I called my order in, popped Goldfinger's Hang Ups album in to my Walkman, and picked up my pizza.  Then I watched All In The Family for hours, nursing a large cheese pizza all by myself.  I was a very, very cool 15 year old boy.

Alright so what's the big fuss?  It's a modest, maybe even generic looking, Italian restaurant.  It can't possibly possess anything so astonishingly special or different that it warrants this much attention, right? No, not right, and stop being snotty.  But Primo's magic doesn't lie in technique or presentation, it's hewn from decades of consistency and precision.  It comes from not trying to do anything riveting or innovative, just making the same thing really good, and making that thing good every single time. What's especially noteworthy about this restaurant is that it's able to sustain itself in a veritable hornet's nest of cheaper, faster competition.  

Wife+Pizza=Truest love

It's hard to say what the key to Primo's persistence is, but the fruits one yields from the labor of love probably have something to do with it.  Ann and Dominic Loria are transplants from Sicily (since 1969 and 1953, respectively) and have owned the unassuming pizza restaurant for 24 years.  Day in and day out for over two decades Primo's has been producing the same brilliant, delicious pizza. That type of steadfast dedication and pride is a scarce and priceless thing in a world increasingly looking to make every part of there day as efficient, small and cheap as possible. Primo's Pizza in Rockford, Illinois stands as one of those rare testaments to a good product actualizing a sustainable business, a sentiment that feels more and more like a bygone era as time goes on.

A scene from literally every time I've visited Rockford in the past 15 years

This post isn't to suggest that you should immediately get in to your car and drive to Rockford and pick up a Primo's pizza, though honestly it wouldn't be the most insane thing you've ever done.  This post is meant to pay tribute to those restaurants that exist everywhere that aren't trying to change the landscape of food, but want to make one thing great, because they absolutely love it. If you don't have your version of that place, find it and patronize unconditionally.  For me, that place is on 1710 N. Rural Street in Rockford Illinois. 

Oh, and by the way, that beer bar and farm-to-table restaurant I mentioned up there are The Oasis Micropub and The Social respectively. They are both awesome and worth your money.