Road trip to Chicago

Yes, it was a bit since the last blog, but a nice trip to Chicago ran Tuesday's post aground.  We started on Friday afternoon and drove our way all the way there, and it took about 5 hours on Friday.  We drove our way in and ate at what is supposed to be the best of Chicago style pizza pie.  It is also interesting to note that Chicago now serves thin crust pizza.  They still call it Chicago style, even thought it is really St. Louis style. 

It was about 9pm, we got a seat for the seven of us and we ordered.  It took about 45 minutes for our 35 minute order to come to us, which seemed to be entirely our server's fault, considering that the first pizza was pretty warm and not hot at all.

We ordered a Tropical Pizza, which is basically a Hawaiian Pizza and we ordered a veggie one.  I only had time to try the Tropical one and this is why:  I normally do like to eat a lot of food, but my body is not used nor does it like to eat food after 9pm.  I'm one of those old fashioned St. Louis natives where 6pm was dinner time and sometimes it went to 7pm, but that was it.  My wife and I normally have our dinner over by 8 and we are getting the kids to bed by 9 so we are not used to dinners after 9pm.  So, anyways, the pizza came and it was huge.

So, you have a giant pizza that is about 2 inches thick.  How thick was that?  Take a look...

So, what we have here, is a thick slice of pie, that has some pineapple and Canadian bacon on it and lots of cheese.  The crust was actually tasting more like a biscuit dough and didn't have that pizza crush flavor at all.  Call me anything you want, but I wasn't crazy about it.

Later on in the trip, besides many trips to the Hellish Golden Arches, we ate at the fantastic Weber Grill.  We saw the restaurant featured on foot network and we had to go and see for ourselves.  This is what I saw:

The cook's line had your basic setup of fries, oven and steamers for certain things and then had about 5 of these giant grills.  I watched the cook as he would check the computer screen for the next order, make a burger or two and then lift the lid and place it on the grill and close the lid quickly.  The fans over the line were always on, making it a very loud cook's line.  The rest all gathered their foods from a side of the line that was also open to the customers and one stood to expidite orders. 

So, in a grill restaurant what did I pick?  Burgers are the norm so I picked something strange to cook on a grill: meatloaf.

I have no idea how they cooked meatloaf, over a hot grill with flames and left it as juicy and moist as it was.  It was awesome as well.  I gave it a 5 out of 5 as it tasted like your best home made meatloaf but had the wonderful charred flavoring and was just perfect.

So, my thought is that if you are looking to get impressed and have time to enjoy yourself: go to the Weber Grill.