The Chariot of Desire: Part V
October 22, 2017
Traveling east with an entire pizza from Barraco’s (the finest pizzeria in all of Chicagoland) in one hand and a steering wheel in the other, I find Indiana again.
But I want to get back to that Barraco’s pizza for a second. This is very important: Barraco’s is, without a doubt, the finest pizzeria in all of Chicagoland.
You see, there are two pizza styles distinct to Chicago pizzerias, the most (in)famous of which is Chicago-style deep-dish.* If you’re unacquainted with the deep-dish variety, it’s the answer to a question that Midwesterners had been asking themselves for decades: what if pizza could kill a guy? That may seem like a frivolous consideration, but that’s the question at the artery-clogged heart of all Midwestern cuisine. Name any type of meat-based product, and a Midwesterner will tell you how many times you should deep fry it, how many pounds of cheese should be added to it, and sternly suggest—but not necessarily mandate—which additional meats could be used to garnish or wrap around it.
With regard to deep-dish pizza, I would politely describe it as aggressively cheesed. The priority placed on cheese inundation is so high that the sauce and toppings are cooked on top of the cheese instead of underneath. The sheer preponderance of cheese necessitates this unusual layering technique due to the longer bake time—which, again, is necessitated to fully cook the overwhelming volume of cheese. The result is a lasagna-style pizza that’s delicious for one slice, decadent for two slices, and remorseful for any quantity above that. I strongly recommend trying it if you’re in Chicago or you’ve just wandered out of the desert after not eating for days.
Perhaps in reaction to the latest health fad sweeping the nation, there’s a a second, slimmed-down variety of Chicago pizza called thin-crust. Thin-crust pizza is almost the exact antithesis to deep-dish—a more socially acceptable amount of cheese is applied to the top, and instead of pie-style slices, the pizza is cut into a grid of snack-size squares. While the obvious risk of cheese overdose has been removed, there’s a sneaky danger to thin-crust pizza: the slices are so small, it’s difficult to determine an appropriate “last slice” threshold. I call this the Pringles Dilemma, which is two-pronged. First, you don’t count the number of slices you’ve eaten, just as you wouldn’t keep a precise count of Pringles munched—thus rendering a quantity-based consumption control useless or impractical. Secondly, because a single slice can seem relatively insignificant, it’s eminently justifiable to consume “one more slice” indefinitely. Before you know it you’ve put down an entire thin-crust pizza, ergo accomplishing an indulgence on par with eating deep-dish pizza. To quote an American proverb: “Once you pop, the fun don’t stop.”
But let’s get back to Barraco’s, which is undeniably the absolute finest pizzeria in all of Chicagoland. Barraco’s serves both a deep-dish pizza and a thin-crust pizza, both of which deserve every accolade. But the thin-crust, I would contend, is the best consumable object in the known multiverse. It achieves perfection at every conceivable metric: the 100 percent real cheese infused with an impeccable blend of herbs and spices; the underlying red sauce that boasts a mind-blowing, complementary balance of sweet and savory; and the corn meal crust with a Goldilocks firmness that snaps without crunching. Biting into a bitesize square of Barraco’s pizza is like looking into the eyes of God if your mouth could see flavor.
Funny I should bring God into this, because my connection to Barraco’s is longstanding and perhaps divinely imposed. As a kid, I went to elementary school with the heirs to the Barraco’s dynasty. (I’ll protect their names here, lest they be doxed and harassed by desperate pizza-crazed mobs.) I even played on the same Little League team with a Barraco—a team that accomplished the 1996 consolation championship game’s runner-up prize in the Oak Lawn Parks Department league. For years afterward our team photo displayed prominently in the entryway of Barraco’s Evergreen Park location—personally my favorite of the seven convenient locations throughout the Chicagoland area. Looking back, it’s easy to surmise a celestial destiny: me and Barraco’s were meant to converge.
Anytime I fall into the orbit of a Barraco’s restaurant (which is anytime I’m within a hundred miles of Chicago), I very purposefully gorge myself on a thin-crust Barraco’s pizza. There is no Pringles Dilemma at play, for I simply eat until the hard-and-fast rules of human physiology kick in. Alternately, I ponder a different conundrum when I eat Barraco’s: the cold, looming truth that I can’t eat Barraco’s pizza forever. In fact there’s a finite number of occasions, a number I’m blind to, when I will feast on those immaculate thin-crusts. This number I call the Barraco’s Number of Mortality, represented as ᗺ in mathematical equations. I fret not for death; I fret for ᗺ.
After a stop at Barraco’s I arrive at my parents’ house, body full of pizza, with ᗺ–1 left to live.
* – Some will contend that stuffed pizza, a variant of deep-dish, is its own distinct variety. I recognize stuffed pizza as a subcategory of deep-dish and will therefore forego a more elaborate discussion on the matter.