🍜Local food

Deep dish is assembled upside down compared with everywhere else: the dough is pressed up the sides of a greased pan, mozzarella goes in first, then sausage or vegetables, then a layer of crushed tomato over everything so the cheese does not burn during a bake that runs 30–45 minutes.

That bake is why you order it the moment you sit down. A single slice is a meal, and the pan comes cut in quarters, not wedges.

The full order is mustard, chopped white onion, bright green sweet pickle relish, a dill pickle spear, tomato wedges, two sport peppers and a dash of celery salt, on a steamed poppy-seed bun. Locals call it dragged through the garden.

Ketchup is the one thing that is not offered, and asking for it in a hot dog stand is a running joke rather than a rule — but the stands genuinely do not keep it on the counter.

Beef is slow-roasted with garlic and oregano, sliced paper-thin and returned to the seasoned jus. It goes into a French roll with either sweet roasted peppers or giardiniera — pickled vegetables in oil, hot or mild.

Order it dipped (roll briefly submerged in the juice), wet (extra juice ladled over) or dry. Dipped is eaten leaning forward, elbows out, over the counter — this is the correct posture and everyone uses it.

Far more common in the city than deep dish: a thin, crisp crust rolled rather than tossed, topped edge to edge, and cut into small squares — the party cut — so it can be eaten one-handed at a bar with a beer.

The corner pieces are the ones people fight over, and the sausage is normally laid on in a single sheet rather than in crumbles.

Two slices of green plantain, smashed flat and fried, hold steak (or chicken, or pork), garlic mayo, lettuce, tomato and cheese. It appeared in a Puerto Rican restaurant in Humboldt Park in the 1990s and spread from there across the city.

It is the one dish on this list that Chicago invented outright rather than adapted, and Paseo Boricua on Division Street is where to eat it.