Pizza: Lou Malnatis or Giordanos. It’s been a long time, but Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due were great as well.

Steak: Gibson’s, Smith & Wollensky, Chicago Chop House

quote:

Originally posted by CPD SIG:

quote:

Originally posted by Jamess1:
Pizanos for pizza
Chicago Cut for steak

The man knows what he's talking about!
There's a few nice places in the south loop.

Take a look at Flo & Santos for pizza- 1300 s Wabash. F&S would be my first choice!

Pizzarea Uno is hard to beat too!

There's a Girodanos (1400 S Michigan) and an Aurilios (1200 S Michigan) as well.

Chicago Cut is a phenomenal steakhouse, there's also Chicago Firehouse (1400 S Michigan), Steak 48 (615 n Wabash), RPM Steak (66 W Kinzie), Capital Grille (633 N St Claire) and Gibsons (1000 N Rush).

flo and santos is pretty damn good. Pisanos would be my second choice.

for steak RPM, Chicago Cut and Mortons.

if you have time stop by to Billy Goat for lunch and a Strohs.

I’ll throw Gibsons in the mix for steak. Chicago Cut is great too, as is Burke’s Prime House.

So many Pizza choices in Chicago. Many seem to taste about the same.
Malnati's USED to be great. From my experience, after the family took over and began to branch out to many locations the food went way down hill. I find the quality is very specific to the location you dine at, some better than others.
Hard to find a bad steak downtown and the restaurant remaining in business.

No pizza but for the best ever Southern Italian food it’s Chicago’s La Scarola.

Giordano's spinach stuffed.

Yep...that'd be my vote.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
Giordano's spinach stuffed.

Yep...that'd be my vote.

This would be my recommendation for a single pizza choice… Bacino’s offers a stuffed spinach choice as well.

Well...
Where did you go? How was it? And most importantly, did the GF like it?!?!

Lou Malnatti's for pizza last night. 2 hour wait but we went over to Michael Jordon’s Steakhouse for a drink and early appetizer.

Absolutely delicious, thanks for the recommendations!

Glad you and the girlfriend enjoyed it!
Sorry if you had to put up with any bullshit from the idiots last night.

quote:

Sorry if you had to put up with any bullshit from the idiots last night.

Actually not as many as I had expected. We had an Uber driver from the Ukraine who loves the US and volunteered that he voted for Trump.

Chicago PD was out in FULL FORCE last night; all in all a pretty good experience.

Club Lago for dinner tonight.

Yeah, days off have been cancelled all week because of the trial. We expected some nonsense last night, a few small, isolated incidents, nothing major.

Just keep your head on a swivel, and if you see a small crowd, head the other way.

Lou Malnatis or Gino’s East!

Period

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
Lou Malnatti's for pizza last night. 2 hour wait but we went over to Michael Jordon’s Steakhouse for a drink and early appetizer.

Absolutely delicious, thanks for the recommendations!

Perfect.

Now you just need to learn the phone number 1-800 Lou-to-go. Anytime you want delivered to your door.

Fun fact: they grow their own tomatoes, make their own sausage and cheese. Absolutely the best!

Club Lago for dinner tonight.

This place was right out of a sitcom. It appears 2 brothers own the place; one rides the bar with a drink in his hand and is the comic relief. The other is the serious one who works the floor and keeps everyone on their toes. The waitresses appear to be sisters and are constantly bickering with each other, at one point the “bar brother” drops the “F Bomb” about the number of dirty glasses and the girls look at him in disgust and yell, “DAD!”

Old school cash registers in use, old building. It reminded me of the place where Michael gunned down Sollozzo and the Police Captain.

The Veal Parmigiana was better than I could have hoped for, the side of pasta and meat sauce finally made me understand why true Italian meat sauce is called, “gravy”.

Had a cannoli for dessert - crazy good.

Chicago may have its issues, but they sure have the food scene down and really appear to take care of their tourists.

Ronin:

Do you go into Chicago while armed?

quote:

Originally posted by sgalczyn:
Ronin:

Do you go into Chicago while armed?

Nope. All of the states that border Minnesota have reciprocity with our state in regards to permit carrying, Illinois does not.

Unless things have changed, my understanding was that it it was near impossible to get a non-resident permit for Illinois.

You can get an out of state CCL.
But IIRC, it's $300+. Which is bullshit!