Move over, Solti. Chicago-style pizza restaurants in Europe are doing more for Chicago`s image than a dozen visits by the Chicago Symphony.
Or so self-declared ”serious eater” Calvin Trillin would have us believe.
”Now you can go to a Chicago pizza restaurant in London and see political posters of Mayor Daley and Cubs pennants and hear White Sox games,” Trillin said at the National Restaurant Association Show last week in McCormick Place.
”It used to be that when a Chicagoan was in Europe and someone who doesn`t speak much English would ask him where he was from, he`d say
`Chicago,` and (the European) would say `Bang! Bang! Al Capone!` But if this keeps up, you`ll say `Chicago,` and they`ll say `pizza.` So I guess that`s a step up.”
Trillin, author and columnist for the New Yorker and the Nation magazines, is a gourmet wit (or a funny foodwriter, as they probably would call him in his native Kansas City). New Yorkers know him as the Henny Youngman of food. A sample of his one-liners Monday:
”Coming across an $18 catfish in a French restaurant makes you feel like you`ve come across a truck driver at a croquet tournament.
”If soy waste and all that health food stuff is so good for you, how come the guys working in health food stores can`t grow full beards?
”Any well brought-up English girl is taught to boil the vegetables for at least a month and a half–in case one of the guests shows up without his teeth.”
But Trillin assures us he does have a serious side ready to tackle important issues, like immigration.
”This country for years had immigration laws based on giving preference to the English. Well, anybody who`s interested in eating knows that was a flaw in national policy,” he says. ”I`m for letting all of Thailand in. And if the Russians get a little lighter touch with the dumpling, I`m for letting a few more of them in, too.
”Actually, 10 years ago when Saigon fell and there were pictures on the television of the helicopers hovering over the American compound with people trying to clamor aboard, I was in front of the television set yelling, `Get the chefs! Get the chefs!` ”
Then, there`s his ”proposition to change the Thanksgiving dish from turkey to spaghetti carbonara” and his investigative efforts that uncovered the chicken a la king conspiracy.
”This country used to be awash in chicken a la king,” he says. ”But there isn`t any chicken a la king anymore and nobody knows where it went. Well, the government has huge salt caves filled with chicken a la king.”
Trillin also is concerned with social issues and is devoted to stamping out ”rubaphobia–the fear of being taken for a rube,” or one without a properly cultivated palate.
The symptoms of rubaphobia are ”when a visitor comes to your town, instead of taking him to the best place for the regional specialty, you take him to a restaurant that revolves on top of the biggest bank building.”
Trillin tells us that such restaurants are called the ”Maison de la Casa House Continental Cuisine, but the continent they have in mind is Antarctica, where everything is frozen.”
For travelers who want to find the best restaurant in town but don`t have a local guide, Trillin advises:
”Go up to the desk, grab the clerk by the necktie and pull him over the counter to get his attention. Then say, `Not where you took your parents on their 25th wedding anniversary, but the place you went to the night you got home after three years in Korea.` ”
Failing that, Trillin`s last resort is something all Chicagoans are sure to understand:
”Stick to regional food and foods of ethnic groups that are strong enough to have two aldermen. So the logical question to ask is, `Who controls the city council?` ”
