DINING IN CHICAGO 1 DINING IN CHICAGO by John Drury with a foreword by Carl Sandburg and published by The John Day Company New York COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY JOHN DRURY PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. by John Drury 2 FOR THE JOHN DAY COMPANY, INC. BY H. WOLFF, NEW YORK TO MARION... The Best Dam' Dinner Companion In All Chicago ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Drury... first began his gastronomic adventures in this life at Chicago, Illinois, on August 9, 1898... in school he was terrible in arithmetic but talented in drawing... had to quit high school to help lift the mortgage of the old homestead... worked in factories, drug stores, stockrooms and department stores... continued education in Lane Technical Night School, studying English composition and French... remembers the English composition but forgot the French... fired from his job as clerk in a South Clark Street bookshop because the proprietor caught him once too often reading Keats... worked on a farm in the Illinois River valley and quit after a week because the plow horses would stop in the middle of a furrow and look at him contemptuously... later became clerk in book section of Marshall Field department store... at outbreak of World War was refused admission to army and navy because of failure to meet physical requirements... intent on wearing a uniform (being Irish), he enlisted in the 11th Regiment, Illinois National Guard, and helped to keep Chicago safe for Democracy ... in 1918 went to New York City to live in Greenwich Village... first contact with intimate side of restaurant life gained while working as a bus boy in Child's, on Broadway, near Wall Street... helped edit a literary magazine in the Village... began to write free verse poetry -- but not because everybody else was doing it... returned to Chicago and Marshall Field's book section... reviewed books for Llewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post... went to Los Angeles in 1920 where he made his first bow in journalism as copy boy on the Los Angeles Record, having been hired by Ted Cook, of "Cook-Coos" fame... the third day on the job Ted made him a cub reporter, giving him as his first assignment the duty of checking on the price of eggs... two months later he was made dramatic and motion picture editor of the Record... made several expeditions across the border into Mexico, but not for alcoholic purposes... after getting enough of the City of Angels and Hollywood, he returned to Chicago, where he became a police reporter on the City News Bureau... his poetry began to appear in the "little magazines that died to make verse free"... to New York again (1923) where, after John Farrar gave him a free meal at the Yale Club, he shipped as a messman (gastronomy, again) aboard a tramp freighter to the east coast of South America, visiting Brazil and the Argentine pampas ... back to Chicago again and began reviewing books for Harry Hansen, on the Chicago Daily News... another sea voyage in 1925, this time to London... same year saw publication of his first book, "Arclight Dusks," a volume of free verse poems ... joined reportorial staff of Chicago Daily News in 1927, after which he covered many gang murders... second book, "Chicago In Seven Days," appeared in 1928, and, since its printing, he has become a sort of "unofficial guide" to the city... last summer he made an expedition across the border to Canada, for alcoholic purposes... he smokes a pipe... has a talented wife... and a dog... has never lectured to a woman's club or over the radio... his hobby is Chicago... Carl Sandburg once wrote of him: "John Drury loves Chicago very much. It is neither an ethereal nor an ephemeral love that John has for the Windy City. John walks, rides and flies over it. He eats and sleeps anywhere in it. A thousand cops know him. So do all the reporters, and he never gets into trouble." FOREWORD On reading over the text of John Drury's book one is not merely persuaded that Chicago is a place to stop for more than a sandwich and a cuppa coffee. From page to page he hammers home the evidence that cooking skill and kitchen science has drifted to Chicago from the continents of Asia, Europe, Africa and the archipelagoes of the seven seas. The ancient declaration, "Man doth not live by bread alone," serves as a literal and materialistic text for Drury's rambles. The good eater who is proud of his repertoire at the table, who is a little vain about his talent at handling a knife and fork for the guidance of victuals, must acknowledge by John Drury 3 that if he can't find a place for performance -- after listening to Drury on when and where to go -- something is wrong. Of course there are a couple of million people in the Windy City who never go into the general run of these places. A single course of the food at some of the more elaborate emporiums would be a tasty square meal for many of these people. There are, however, those who would like to eat first hither and then yon every day in the week, with no two days alike. Also there are the people who have drawn extra pay or had a ship come home or made a killing in a crap game. Also there are the folks who get tired of the home cooking, the delicatessen, the kitchenette, and wish an evening of change. If any of these get sore at Drury, that's ingratitude. Those who refuse to thank him are ingrates who probably happen to be off their feed, as the farmhands say. Furthermore, there are the citizens like the present writer who have a high batting average and fielding average in the one- arm joints where the taxi drivers mention "rusta biff" knowing just whom they are kidding. These citizens can enjoy reading about where to eat and thereafter converse more intelligently about such food establishments as have personality, savor, and savoir faire. Authorities in folk lore credit Chicago with the origin of the tale of the two garbage wagon drivers stopping to pass the time near a house into which had moved a new family. The driver who had in his official capacity served them that morning was asked what kind of people they were. He replied, "I don't know. All I know is they got swell swill." Carl Sandburg CONTENTS Foreword by CARL SANDBURG Hors d'oeuvre An Old American Custom An Old French Custom Around the Town Thirty-three Gastronomical Locations More Gastronomical Locations Rialto Tables Along the Avenue Around the World Dining in Bohemia Americana Among the Literati by John Drury 4 Between Trains Uptown and Northward Shopper's Rest Suburbia Temples of the Sun-dodgers The Great Black Way Wide Open Spaces Cover Charges and Minimum Charges Tipping DINING IN CHICAGO An Intimate Guide HORS D'OEUVRE A Few Appetizing Words About the Public Tables of the Town If you think that Chicago, from a gourmet's point of view, is nothing more than a maze of red-hot stands, chili parlors, cafeterias, barbecue stalls, one-arm joints, chop suey restaurants, counter lunch rooms and all other such human filling stations, artistically embellished with bullet holes, you're as mistaken as Columbus was when he started out on his trip to India the wrong way. Engage in an earnest trip of exploration about the town and you will find, as with Old Chris, a whole new world -- a world of epicurean delights that you never thought existed in the City of Winds. We will admit, of course, that the human filling stations are here and in abundance, too, just as they are in New York, New Orleans, or San Francisco; but Chicago, like these other cities, can also boast of first-class restaurants that would delight the heart and palate of the most fastidious and cosmopolitan of gourmets. There are many people, especially among those who go frequently to London or Paris, who would laugh at the idea of such a book as this. "What," we can hear them exclaiming, "dining in Chicago? Why, you canH dine in Chicago. When I want to dine I go to Paris!" These wellmeaning but uninformed persons, it develops, possess a very limited knowledge of the restaurants of Chicago and of the table delicacies to be found in them. It is for the benefit of such haughty innocents, both native and otherwise, that this book was written. We will show them gastronomical locations that are high up on the lists of all knowing epicures; we will point out aromatic steak houses, boulevard cafes, foreign coffee houses, hotel dining rooms, chop houses, sea food establishments, roadhouses, tea rooms, bohemian haunts, weinstubes and inns -- all types and kinds of eating places where foods are wholesome, inviting, novel and expertly prepared. Chicago is full of them if you but know their names and addresses. For in this very same city, you may sit with sultry-eyed Arabs in one of their basement coffee houses and eat arische mahshi, with baklawa and a demi-tasse of Turkish coffee for dessert, while around you the swarthy descendants of the Bedouins smoke those Oriental water-pipes and argue politics in a strange tongue. Or you by John Drury 5 may prefer to dine with actors and actresses who live at the exclusive Blackstone Hotel just to say they are stopping there, but who sneak off to a hole-in-the-wall tea room next door where the meals are good -- but inexpensive.