He was like a little kid, leading me into the dark, underground restaurant where we were seated at a small, square table; his excitement overtook me. “Have you ever had Chicago-style pizza?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, feeling somewhat guilty for having never experienced this thing that so excited him. I opened the manilla menu covered with black print, searching for the answer to this obvious culinary delicacy that I’d somehow, in my naivety, missed.
He was undeterred: “It’s a deep-dish, stuffed pizza. They lay a crust on the bottom of the pan, fill it with tomato sauce and cheese and whatever you like, put another crust on top, like a pie, more tomato sauce and cheese…. It’s amazing.”
I could almost hear him salivating in his description, if such a thing is possible. His excitement slowly transfused into me; I groped for understanding. “Oh, kind of like Pizza Hut?” I asked, hoping.
“No, not at all. Their crust is somewhat fried and oily….”
The server interrupted, asking for our drink order.
Less than half-an-hour later, a small pan sat before me, filled with the obligatory baked dough and tomato sauce, cheese and spinach layered an inch-and-a-half thick, tucked beneath another crust with more sauce and cheese, the whole thing only six inches in diameter. There was no way I was going to finish this thing.
I dug my fork into the pan, pierced the layers with knife and pulled up strings of cheese, sauce, strands of spinach falling over the tines, layers of crisp and moist crust….
Overwhelmed with flavor, with the intensity of this steaming depth of pie, the experience of the best pizza I’d ever tasted rooted itself in my memory.
―
It was all I could talk about for years. We loved going out for pizza, starting in Montreal at the tiny shop where his friend served slices and fries; at the restaurant a few streets away where I first tasted poutine on a picnic table outside; at Pizza Hut on ‘the mountain’ in the middle of winter, where we’d devour an entire pizza between ourselves. There was no comparison in the experience; each pizza delicious, each place beautiful for itself, for the company, for the conversation, for the simplicity.
But I’d told him about the deep-dish pizza that plugged itself into my memory, wanting desperately to share this magnificent thing. He loved food, ate like a king when it was worthy; he would surely enjoy it.
I whined and begged for long years in Hamilton, wishing to him and to the universe for Chicago-style pizza, or at least a chance to take him to this experience somewhere in the North. Perhaps we’d even make it to Chicago, to taste the thing in its original.
―
We ordered out often enough, and tonight we wanted pizza. I had it in mind, as I always did, that I wanted that deep-dish delicacy, layers of sauce and cheese and stuffing. It dawned on me, at last: just check online. Just see.
What are the chances that Hamilton would have a Chicago-style pizzeria? I thought, my fingers typing.
―
The delivery guy came to the door, revealed from his red-fleshed envelope a white-and-red pizza box, and handed it to me. I was shocked at the weight, what must have been five pounds or more of meat and cheese and sauce. But it made sense: we’d found it.
Somehow, tucked into a brick building on Hamilton’s East Mountain, Chicago-Style Pizza (named just so obviously) existed, successful for years and seeming in no hurry to go anywhere. Except while on deliveries.
He paid, surprised that it shouldn’t cost any more for this insanity than for a single-crusted deep-dish pizza from Pizza Hut at a fraction of the weight.
The excitement of my finding overwhelmed me; we opened the box like two kids at Christmas. The scent of rich, spiced tomato billowed out, demanding.
We dug in, gorging ourselves incredulously.
―
It’s a thing of sharing, this pizza, this enormous luxury spilling over with love, spilling over into love, from one love to the next. There must be something to this style of pizza, something in the original creation of overabundance of love, like the overabundance of sauce and fillings and cheese, tucked into a crust to hold all of that great love in.
For the sharing continues from our love to our next loves and to our friends and family, always in excitement that never ceases, always celebrating in wonder and surprise this incredible, voluminous thing.
Oceans of Mine 