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from its own style of pizza.

- Who has the best deep dish?

Everybody has their opinion.

- [Narrator] To innovations in fine dining.

- That one plate that was planned to be like dynamite in your mouth.

- [Narrator] The story of food in Chicago is surprising.

- Oh my God.

Who's eating a 24-ounce ribeye?

Well, everybody is.

- [Narrator] Inspiring.

- You'll get one, and you're like, "Holy Moses, this is so much meat.

- [Narrator] Inviting.

- Once we sit down and actually taste it, it might just be delicious.

- [Narrator] And, yes, delicious.

- Chicago style hotdog is my favorite.

It's a symphony on a bun.

- [Narrator] As the city grew, waves of new citizens would transform what Chicagoans craved.

- All cuisines are constantly in flux.

- That is what creates that rich tapestry that we get to experience as diners today.

- [Narrator] It's food that feeds the city's soul.

- There is no more exciting food city than Chicago.

- It's one of the great food cities in the world.

- [Narrator] Iconic Foods, next on Chicago Stories.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (calming music) (calming music continues) [Narrator] Chicagoans love to eat out, enjoy a great meal.

(jubilant music) - Why do we go out to dinner?

We go out to dinner because we want to feel special.

We want to feel recognized.

We want to feel like king or queen for the day.

(jubilant music) - [Narrator] And the city enjoys a reputation as a food mecca.

- This big beautiful city is the best city in the country to be hungry.

- [Narrator] Savoring an excellent meal in a beautiful setting is a long tradition in Chicago, going back to the days when there were just about 4,000 residents and not much else.

- Chicago was a Mud Town.

Literally.

It's really, it's built on a swamp.

And when it rained, people sank in the mud.

- [Narrator] But there was promise in the mud for a handful of wealthy land speculators.

They had come here from the east coast hoping to get a jump on the anticipated trade boom.

- [Bruce] So they're willing to endure mud because they could see the future.

- [Narrator] But they weren't willing to endure a second-class meal.

- These speculators want, you know, sort of British style, European style continental foods.

- [Narrator] And they weren't going to find that in the city's rough-hewn taverns.

The cuisine they craved was served in the Lake House, a hotel featuring the city's first fine dining room.

- English folks who were visitors here praised it as like the best food they had had since they left Baltimore.

- [Narrator] Hotel dining rooms set the standard for a great night out in 19th century Chicago, with elegant place settings and printed menus.

And the food was all local, from nearby farms, fields, and waterways.

- A lot of these menus were six, seven, eight courses long.

- You eat a light entree of meats, then you went to another course of heavier meats, a lot of wild game.

Deer.

Squirrel.

Hardly a leafy vegetable in sight.

- It's amazing that they were able to live as long as they did because of the amount of fat and jellied aspics and quails.

It wouldn't be unusual to start your meal with a dozen oysters and champagne.

- [Narrator] Oysters were everywhere.

And because they were cheap, everyone ate them.

- Oysters come to Chicago right away, down the Great Lakes, packed in sawdust, and they lived for a couple weeks.

- It's mind-boggling to me.

Without modern refrigeration technology.

- I don't know if I'd want to eat an oyster that was packed in sawdust for a week.

- [Narrator] Most 19th century Chicagoans were not indulging in an elegant meal.

They were working-class immigrants, fleeing poverty and persecution, looking for jobs in the city's booming industrial economy.

- You really cannot talk about the history of food in Chicago without talking about the immigrant experience.

They're one and the same.

- You get people feeling like I would maybe be able to give my family, my kids a better future if I go to America.

- [Alpana] That also means that they left their family behind.

That sacrifice is homesickness.

- [Narrator] The hunger for home would become a powerful force in shaping the city's food scene.

- I can just tell even from my parents, when they first came to this country from the Fiji Islands, my mom, the only way she could cure her homesickness was with food.

Having the flavors, having the smells, having that visceral ability to just kind of transport her back home, eased that homesickness.

- Those are the memories that we have as kids of being nurtured and being loved from the people who are making this food for us.

- I think over the years, food becomes that connection of what it was like when people first came here, how far they've come, and that realization that they were able to create their version of the American dream.

- [Narrator] Generations of immigrants made ends meet by selling food from their homelands off push carts in Chicago's many open air markets.

- The dynamic there was intense, I would say, with people shouting, throwing things.

- For the immigrants, for the new arrivals, it just makes sense for them to start cooking.

It's something that they take with them.

It's up, it's up here.

So cooking is just an easy way to kind of get into the culture and start making a buck.

- It was sort of the first level immigrant job as it in some ways still is.

It was something you could come in, start up without much capital.

- They would often take old prams or old baby buggies and outfit them with a steamer.

And there you go.

You are an independent businessman.

- [Narrator] With the city's population swiftly rising across the 19th century to nearly two million people, vendors found plenty of hungry customers.

And it was at the Maxwell Street Market that one of Chicago's largest immigrant groups, the Germans, introduced a food now considered all American, the hot dog.

- My father loved hot dogs.

We'd be driving home from church and he'd take a detour, and he'd go, "I know a really good hot dog stand down here."

- As a friend of mine said, how you ate your hot dog is your religion.

- [Narrator] The German butchers who first came in the late 1840s had a rich culture of sausage-making, mixing pork and beef with a full array of spices.

- Germans have roughly 250 or so kinds of sausages.

One that has a little less salt in it or coriander in it, nutmeg, they're really good.

- [Narrator] Surprisingly, the German hot dog was not for the masses.

It was a pricey, handmade delicacy.

- 200 years ago, people couldn't afford to eat hot dogs.

You had to pay somebody to stand there and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop, and you have to mix it and emulsify it to make the sausage.

- [Narrator] But the commercial meat grinder changed everything, and Chicago's growing Jewish population provided a lucrative market for an all-beef option.

- If they're keeping kosher, they have different dietary restrictions.

So they wouldn't be eating pork.

- [Narrator] The all-beef hot dog was introduced to the world at the 1893 Colombian Exposition by a pair of sausage makers from Central Europe, Emil Reichel and Samuel Ladany.

The 10-cent meal was such a hit that they stayed in the city opening the Vienna Sausage Company.

- They made an all-beef hot dog, which is still the standard in Chicago today.

- [Narrator] Early on, it was common to call hot dogs frankfurters or wieners.

But politics would change that.

- World War I happened, and there was a big wave of anti-German sentiment.

People weren't gonna stop eating those sausages, they're too good.

But we started calling 'em hot dogs.

- You no longer see the hot dog having its German roots.

It's American food.

It's Chicago food.

- [Narrator] Permanent hot dog stands popped up in Chicago after peddlers were forced off the street by reformers claiming to be concerned with food safety.

- Chicago has a thing against push carts and street vendors.

They thought they were unsanitary.

- Much of this really has to do with anti-immigrant sentiment, and increasingly laws were passed to make it more difficult to be a peddler.

- [Narrator] As the Depression set in, stand owners, hoping to draw more customers, experimented with offering free vegetable toppings.

- Everybody's in competition with everybody else.

So you need to differentiate yourself.

So you put stuff on it.

- [Narrator] Though the exact origin story is lost to time, the humble hot dog would become the iconic Chicago dog, buried under layers and layers of toppings.

(playful music) - A Chicago style hot dog is the perfect metaphor of Chicago.

How do we make it loud?

How do we make it proud?

How do we make it colorful?

- What'll you have, babe?

- Let me have a hot dog with relish, onions, tomatoes.

- [Narrator] The Chicago dog follows very strict rules.

- It's an ethnic layering.

- [Alpana] So you have the soft bun that's been steamed.

- It's gotta be a steamed Rosen's poppy seed bun.

- [Bruce] All beef sausage, Jewish, German.

- Chicago style hot dog is an all-beef, Vienna beef, natural casing, get the snap.

- Then mustard.

- [Bruce] Mustard, German, or East European.

- Then you're gonna get the sweet neon green relish.

- Electric green, if you can find it.

- [Bruce] Onions.

- Raw onions.

- [Steve] From Greek and Italian street vendors.

- Tomatoes.

They're Italian.

Pickles.

They pickled everything.

- It's gotta be a spear, can't be chips.

- And hot peppers.

What they call sport peppers.

- And then the celery salt is last.

- A little bit of celery salt, and that's a perfect dog.

- For here?

- Yes, ma'am.

- [Narrator] The final rule?

No ketchup.

- Nobody puts ketchup on a hot dog.

- That's a sin.

That is a mortal sin, to put ketchup on a hot dog.

- I took my son to this place for this hot dog joint.

He was about 12 years old.

And he had a dog with everything.

And I said, "Max, congratulations.

This is your dog mitzvah."

- [Narrator] The beloved drag through the garden dog may sound unusual, but chefs agree, the unlikely combination works.

- When I cook, I try to touch all of the taste buds.

Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami.

Chicago style hot dog does that.

It's got everything.

It's a symphony on a bun.

- I love Chicago hot dogs.

(laughing) - [Narrator] Chicagoans have always loved cheap, handheld meals bursting with flavor.

And as the city grew, people from different cultural backgrounds turned out culinary creations of their own.

- Chicago's got a lot of sandwiches with interesting names.

- [Narrator] Like the jibarito, a sandwich invented in the city's west side Puerto Rican community.

- A jibarito is the most extraordinary sandwich ever created.

- [Narrator] Local restaurant owner, Juan Figueroa, had run out of bread, but he had plenty of plantains on hand.

- Oh, plenty of plantain, bro.

We grow plantains and bananas like crazy.

- But instead of bread, you use green plantains that are fried, smashed, deep fried again as your bread.

- And then they take the most luscious pulled pork and then a garlicy mayo, tomatoes, lettuce, and then just the right amount of melty American cheese.

And then they smush that all together.

- [Monica] Delicious.

- [Narrator] And then there's the gyro sandwich invented in Chicago in the 1920s.

50 years later, Greeks in Chicago were the first to mass produce gyros.

- What we did in Chicago is we created the first preformed, precooked, shippable gyros by basically taking all of that meat and spices and fat that could be poured into a cone, and then sent out pretty much precooked.

That's why you still find all the top gyros manufacturers in the Chicago suburbs.

And they make this stuff for everybody in the nation.

- [Narrator] And South siders took this Greek favorite to another level by combining gyros with two kinds of beef to create a Chicago original with a unique name, the Jim Shoe.

- You've got the Jim Shoe, which is gyros, Italian beef, and corned beef, often griddled and chopped up on a bun, served with, you can never say tzatziki, you have to say guy-row sauce, 'cause this is a south side sandwich and that's how you say it on the south side, guy-row sauce.

- [Narrator] Mexicans also brought their sandwiches, or tortas, to Chicago.

But it was the taco that captured the city's heart.

It's easy to find them all over town, from food trucks to high-end restaurants, and everywhere in between.

- It's crazy how the American public totally adopted tacos.

It's like anytime is a good time for tacos, which they're not wrong.

It's the celebration of three things in a taco.

It's the corn tortilla.

Corn's like the center point of our cuisine.

Really, our culture revolves so much around it.

And then we have meat.

On the streets, you'll normally always see meat being celebrated, right?

And then it's salsa.

The tortilla, the protein, the salsa.

That's all you need for a good taco.

- [Narrator] Mexican immigrants who first came to Chicago in the 1920s found work in factories, not in restaurants.

They cooked their family recipes at home trying to recapture the spicy complex flavors they loved from Mexico.

- I'm going to make pozole the way my mother made pozole, to take away a little bit of that homesickness and then be like, "This is our home now."

- [Narrator] Surprisingly, most Chicagoans had never had a taste of authentic Mexican food.

- The only thing that was really known in Chicago was Tex-Mex kind of food.

- [Narrator] Like chili con carne, a spicy stew made with chili peppers, beans, and meat.

It was introduced to the city at the 1893 World's Fair when it was served at a chili stand in the Texas building.

- My first experience with chili con carne was actually in Spanish class.

(laughing) "What did you have for dinner yesterday?"

"Oh, well, Javier had chili con carne."

And I would be like, "What is chili con carne?"

You know?

(laughing) - [Narrator] People loved it.

Soon the city was filled with chili parlors, and chili was piled on top of everything from hot dogs to mac and cheese.

The traditional tamale, on the other hand, is an authentic Mexican favorite.

It has a filling inside a corn dough, then steamed in a corn husk.

A common street food in Chicago, it was anything but in Mexico.

- Tamales are normally for celebrations, takes a lot of work to make.

And most of the time when you're making them too, like you involve the whole family.

- [Narrator] Chicago's talent for mass producing food items led to the creation of a tamale unknown anywhere else in the world.

- These kind of red hot tamales are not an authentic, you know, Oaxacan style tamale wrapped in a corn husk.

- It's the extruded tamale.

They push through a machine, so there's a filling, and then the cornmeal wrapped around it.

So when it comes out, it's got that perfect filling right in the middle of it.

- They definitely were catering to the American palette because you're like, "Well, what sells?

What are people really liking?"

- [Narrator] The Chicago style tamales are sold warm out of the same hot water bath used to eat hot dogs.

- I would not wanna get one of those if I wanted a tamale.

- I think they taste good.

I mean, they don't taste like anything I've ever had in Mexico.

- [Narrator] Today, the regional richness of Mexican cuisine is enjoyed by the entire city in some of Chicago's most celebrated dining destinations.

- I'm a chef/owner of Mi Tocaya Antojeria.

It's a style of restaurants that revolves around food that you ate at your home.

- We were trying to represent as best we could the regional foods of Mexico.

All these different moles and preparations, all cuisines are constantly in flux.

And out of those kinds of adjustments oftentimes comes really wonderful things.

They show the ingenuity and the flavor profile of the homeland.

- Number three with links for here, hashed browns, onions.

- [Narrator] Chicagoan's looking for a variety of ready-to-eat foods regardless of their backgrounds have long turned to cafeterias like Valois in Hyde Park.

They've enjoyed a strong local following for a century.

- There you go.

- Thank you, John.

- A cafeteria hotline, which basically is the grandfather of fast food.

- [Cook] Barbecue chicken and ribs.

- [Jeff] Getting them in, getting them out, consistent, quality, quick.

- Mm, oh man.

- [Narrator] The concept of a place offering food served up hot when the customer walked in the door, was invented in Chicago, as skyscrapers rose and office workers poured in.

- Working at the stock market, working at the Board of Trade, working in the bookkeeping rooms all over the Loop.

- You've gotta feed these people at midday.

And so they had to come up with places that were fast, cheap, and fairly desirable.

- [Narrator] And a lot of those people were women who were new to the workforce.

- You started seeing the wider use of typewriters, and women were considered to be better typists because of their tiny fingers.

They could use this new invention.

If they were paid less than men now, they were definitely paid less than men at that time.

And so they needed these inexpensive places.

- [Narrator] Inexpensive places where women were welcome, unlike taverns.

- [Monica] Whenever you see the advertisements, they said, "For the price of what you would pay as a gratuity or a tip, you can get your whole lunch here and get it fast."

- [Narrator] Cafeterias had gleaming tile floors and employees dressed in crisp white uniforms.

The fare included hot and cold meat plates, pie, and coffee.

And to ensure a speedy meal, diners were offered stiff desk chairs rather than tables.

- They were one arm cafeterias.

A one arm looked like a school desk.

Then you ate quickly, and then could get out and leave because the other side's open.

- [Narrator] When the sun set on the downtown Business District, neon would light up the sky.

For much of the 20th century, the Loop had a second identity, as a bustling entertainment and dining district.

- Right down from Marshall Field's, you had this incredible block that had Henrici's on the corner, famous old restaurant, a terrific Italian restaurant on the other corner.

- [Narrator] In the center of it all sat Hoe Sai Gai, an ornate Chinese restaurant.

- I grew up in a restaurant family.

Most of them came from Canton, also known as Guangdong.

My great-grandfather came up to Chicago and he opened up his first restaurant.

At the Hoe Sai Gai, we had four gorgeous art deco and art nouveau dining rooms.

All the stars and theater goers would go there.

- [Narrator] And the dish that was all the rage was chop suey.

- Everybody wanted chop suey.

Everybody wanted to try it.

Chop suey has some antecedents in China, basically chopped up food, bits of pork, bits of celery, because that's what you could find here in some sort of brownish sauce.

It's not a dish that I enjoy.

It's really bland.

But I can imagine it was thrilling for a lot of people to feel like, "Ooh, I've traveled to China."

I remember asking my Uncle George, "These restaurants that were for the Chinese who lived at Clark and Van Buren, right?"

He said, "No, Monica, they're just for the White people."

- [Narrator] Dozens of chop suey houses operated in Chicago as early as 1905.

That number would grow to the hundreds.

Ironically, that growth was due to a federal law aimed at restricting Chinese immigration.

- The Chinese Exclusion Act marks a shift in American immigration policy towards a more specifically racially based policy.

There were like 100,000 Chinese people in the United States when the Exclusion Act gets passed.

The numbers are so small.

It's not just about numbers.

It's about race.

- One of the big reasons they chose to pick on the Chinese was labor.

They felt like they were stealing native jobs.

- If you were a teacher or a student, you still can come.

Tourists were still welcome, people who were merchants who didn't do any type of manual labor.

- [Narrator] In a clever interpretation of the ban, Chinese restaurateurs were able to qualify as merchants to gain entry.

- As a restaurant merchant, you had to bring tens of thousands of dollars in, and a White person had to vouch for you.

- [Narrator] Despite the huge popularity of Chinese restaurants, a widening anti-Chinese sentiment fueled racist suspicions and criticism.

(singing in foreign language) - There were all sorts of editorials about how dangerous chop suey restaurants were, especially to young girls who might be lured into them.

Private booths, racy jazz music, located not far from Chicago's vice district.

Chicago tried to pass several laws.

Some wouldn't allow women into the restaurants after 10 o'clock, some of them said that you had to be an American citizen to have a restaurant license.

And people said, "Well, that would exclude all Chinese restaurant owners."

And an alderman said, "So, you know, basically we can do without them.

That's okay."

(singing in foreign language) - [Narrator] None of the laws succeeded.

- [Monica] Today, there are three times as many Chinese restaurants as there are McDonald's.

- [Narrator] The eventual repeal of the ban in 1965 made way for an expanded Chinese food scene.

- And suddenly Chinese food wasn't just for Americans.

It was Chinese food for Chinese people.

- The more you try and the more you taste, you learn to kind of crave that because there's also an exhilarating quality to experiencing new foods.

- [Narrator] Chicago's adventurous palette might only be matched by its stubborn attachment to the familiar, especially if it's in an elegant setting.

- What is more grandiose than going to a steak house in Chicago?

- So we have our tomahawk right here.

- Wow, that is great.

- There's a prestige.

There's a certain level of luxury, abundance.

- [Server] And this is the big porterhouse.

- Oh my goodness.

- Oh my god, amazing.

- [Server] Medium filet on this side.

- You're gonna go to a steakhouse and you are not gonna leave hungry.

- Abundance.

Perfect.

Just what Chicago is.

- That all started here.

It all started with the Stockyards.

- [Narrator] For 100 years, starting in 1865, the Union Stockyard dominated the nation's industrial meat production.

- It's a full square mile.

Thousands and thousands of animals being slaughtered every day.

- 80% of America's meat came from Chicago.

- [Narrator] With so much fresh, high-quality beef, Chicago earned a reputation as the home of the steakhouse.

And Chicago's business community ensured all those restaurants flourished.

(jubilant music) - Chicago's a convention city.

♪ A delegate in Chicago may siesta ♪ - What do conventions love?

♪ A delegate in Chicago ♪ ♪ A delegate in Chicago ♪ ♪ Spends an awful lot of time consuming steak ♪ - Oh my god, who's eating a 48-ounce T-bone?

Who's eating a 24-ounce rib eye?

Well, everybody is.

The baked potatoes that are half the size of your arm.

- I read about how at the Stock Yard Inn, you can go pick your steak there.

It brands your initial onto it and cook it right there.

♪ If he has a steady hand ♪ ♪ He can even put his brand ♪ ♪ On his own Chauteau Briande ♪ ♪ And no mistake ♪ - [Jeff] I mean, talk about farm to table.

They invented that term.

- No one cares how much their bill is at a steakhouse.

You're giving the public exactly what they want at that moment.

- And then I think if you served us on the dinner plate, it'd be good.

♪ A delegate in Chicago ♪ ♪ Spends an awful lot of time ♪ ♪ Just eating steak ♪ - You won't be disappointed in these steaks, ma'am.

- You go to a steakhouse and you feel like a big shot.

- [Narrator] The steady supply of steak depended on the city's low-paid immigrants doing the dirty and dangerous work on the Stockyard's killing floors.

- The throngs of German and Italian immigrants and Blacks from the South, all coming together and creating the industrialization of the American food supply.

- [Narrator] While slaughterhouse workers couldn't afford regular steak dinners, many could afford to take home cheaper, sinewy scraps of beef.

And using a bit of creativity and just the right amount of spice, Italian immigrants on the near west side turned that tough meat into a tender juicy sandwich.

Word is that slicing the meat thin made it easy to frugally feed a lot of people at Depression Era weddings.

The move from wedding dish to beloved street food happened in the late 1930s with the opening of Al's #1 Beef.

- As Chris Pacelli, who runs Al's #1 Beef, tells it, his Uncle Al Ferrari, he had just got outta jail and his friend said, "Hey, how about if we open a bookie joint together?"

And he said, "Okay, and I'll have the front where I'll sell beef sandwiches."

Apparently he sold so many that he said, "I'm gonna break off from this bookie joint.

I'm gonna start a legit business."

- My dad grew up with these guys, all right, with Chris, Bonesy, from Al's Beef.

My dad grew up across the street.

They swear by this that they're the inventors.

- You know, everybody's got their own way of doing it.

You know, who makes it this way?

Who makes it that way?

But this is the original way that it started.

- And then you have other factions swearing that they're the inventor.

And I've done a lot of digging, and it's, I mean people, people will cut you.

- Italian beef is so simple.

I'm not sure that there is such a thing as someone who invented Italian beef.

- [Chris] We start off with the top round.

- It's a cheap cut of meat.

You could use eye of round.

You could use chuck.

- Rubbing it, making it flavorful, roasting it low and slow.

- After three-and-a-half hours, we'll pull this out, let all the natural juices drip.

- All in the efforts of making it succulent.

- [Paul] And then you're slicing it very, very thin.

- And you can see right through it, almost.

- Want it dipped?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Soaking in its juices and putting it on an Italian roll, and it's got to be an Italian roll.

If you try to put that on French bread or on a hot dog bun, it's gonna dissolve in your hands.

- [Jeff] Then you top it with sweet peppers and/or hot peppers.

- [Paul] And you eat it standing up.

- It's juicy, it's crunchy, it's unctuous.

It's oily.

It's beefy.

It makes you sweat.

- [Chris] Because it's so juicy, you gotta lean back, put your forearms on the counter so you don't get it all over you.

- [Narrator] The sloppy sandwich remained a local secret until a hit TV show, "The Bear" introduced Italian beef to the world.

- [Chi-Chi] Here you go, my love.

That's for you, young lady.

- [Tina] What's this?

- That's the Italian beef sandwich.

- What's an Italian beef?

- You know what a French dip is?

- Yeah.

- That's an Italian dip.

I hope you, I hope you like it.

I'm Richie.

- I'm Tina.

Thank you, Richie.

- Nice to meet you.

- [Narrator] They also popularized the spicy oily condiment that topped it all off, giardiniera.

- You're not gonna find these preserved brined vegetables and olive oil really anywhere else except for Chicago.

- Carmy did have my giardiniera in his fridge, season two, episode two.

He opens the fridge after a long night at The Bear, and there it is.

It was the rear label, but the giardiniera was there.

I don't think he opened it though.

That would've been nice.

- [Narrator] Chicago's Italian community had turned a cheap cut of meat to gold.

It was a trick also pulled off by the city's African American community.

- A lot of foods that we consider soul food were foods that we had to make delicious, food that was thrown away.

You know, just enough to keep slaves sustained to be able to work.

A lot of those foods, we made magic out of.

- [Narrator] Black residents who had fled terror in the Jim Crow South brought their food with them, sharing it in the South and West side neighborhoods where they were able to find housing.

- Soul food is sort of the immigrant cuisine, if you will, of southern cuisine.

What you cook in the city, when you have to shop in urban markets, you don't have the garden anymore, you gotta go to the market and see what you can get.

- We all need a little bit of home, wherever we are.

My fondest memories of food is watching my grandmother cook.

My mom was a working mom, and so a lot of her meals were just things that was convenient.

But when granny came to town, she did not play that.

She made greens, turnip and mustard greens mixed.

Sometimes she put okra in them.

And I mean just the aromas from the house.

For a long time, I couldn't cook soul food.

It was my time at Spiaggia that I was able to start embracing foods that I was familiar with in my culture.

I realized, you know, anything can be made something special.

- [Narrator] Making seemingly ordinary food special is the story of Chicago's signature barbecue dish, the rib tip, hot link combo.

- Rib tips was garbage.

It was scrap meat.

A lot of it is cartilage.

- [Narrator] Mississippi barbecue expert Myles Lemons saw potential where many only saw garbage.

Lemons came to Chicago as part of the second Great Migration in the late 1940s.

Together with his brothers, he opened Lem's, a south side smokehouse specializing in rib tips.

- It's a southern thing.

- [Dominique] They would chop the rib tips right there and cover 'em with sauce.

- He come up with this barbecue sauce he made one day, and he let the fella taste it, and he said, "Ooo, that's good."

- And it was something that was sought after in the Black communities.

- 20 years ago, 25 years ago, they was throwing rib tips away, not now.

- [Narrator] And then the Lemons paired them with a homemade smoked pork sausage, they called hot links.

- So the tip and link combo was born.

- [Narrator] And it was cooked in a signature Chicago style smoker.

- [Paul] What's called an aquarium smoker.

- [Dominique] Chicago is known for it.

- This aquarium style cooking is quicker.

You can do ribs in probably two hours.

- I know it's hot as heck in here, but, (laughing) in Arkansas, that's what we get.

Plenty heat.

(laughing) - The aquarium smoker is built with a stack for smoke to push out of the building.

- Cooking with wood is easy with me, because that's all we ever done.

- It lights up the area so you can smell barbecue a mile from the restaurant calling your name, "Whew, there's barbecue over here."

- [Narrator] But the smokers take special skill and tending.

- They've got the the pane glass that they're keeping an eye on everything, but it's cooking over direct heat.

And they're constantly hosing down the flames.

- It will burn if you walk off and doesn't manage it, it will burn.

- Very dangerous.

Glass explodes.

It breaks, it cracks.

- They're also spraying the meat to keep it nice and moist while it cooks.

- Sometimes you just admire the beauty of the fire.

And you think, "Yeah, I just cooked this and look at it, look how beautiful this meat is."

And then you taste into it, you gotta love it.

- [Narrator] The results are all Chicago.

- That's the way you do it.

- Rib tips are like snowflakes.

No two are the same.

You'll get one and you're like, "Holy Moses, this is so much meat."

And it always got a little bit of little bone in there, little something, little cartilage.

You gotta work around.

Go to the next one, you're like, "This one was magical," and had like, "I could eat everything in this one."

- The hot link is a coarse ground sausage.

It's peppery.

You know, the white bread's just there to kind of sop it all up.

It's just a masterpiece of textures and flavors.

- [Narrator] Many foods in Chicago are neighborhood dependent.

However, there is one food that seems to touch everyone everywhere, pizza.

- Typically when you walk through the front door of a pizzeria, you're gonna smell the scent of the baking bread.

You're gonna smell oregano.

There's fennel a lot of times in the sausage.

And when we talk about pizza in Chicago, the default is sausage.

- We're a sausage town, just knobs of sausage baked in.

- [Narrator] Chicago's favorite go-to is a sausage pizza with a very thin crust.

- After World War II, you have this really thin tavern style pizza come up.

- Why?

Because if you give your guests something salty to eat, they want to order more beers.

And they're really just making money off the beers, frankly, not the food.

- [Narrator] It's known as tavern style pizza because it was served as a free appetizer in taverns.

Places like Vito and Nick's owned by the Barraco Family.

- These were thin and crispy pizzas, very thin, cut into little squares, passed around the bar, so you can put a square on a cocktail napkin.

You don't need a plate.

You don't need a knife and fork.

- It's by far the most entertaining and dynamic way to eat a pizza.

It's also the most crowd pleasing.

I'm a middle piece guy.

I'll go right in there and like hot tub it, right?

Right from the center, grab that squishy middle piece, and, right, got those corners.

Those are the little snacks.

Everybody comes from the basement.

You take one of those four corners, usually pop 'em in.

- [Narrator] While tavern style is the favorite of locals, it's another type of Chicago pizza that gets all the attention and draws in the tourists, deep dish.

- I think people all over the country think we're like, every Friday, we're getting down with like a deep dish for the family.

That's not the case.

- [Narrator] The sheer size of the high-crusted pie means diners have to sit down and pull out their knives and forks, and the city overflows with options.

- Who has the best deep dish?

Is it Pequod's?

Oh, but they suck at delivery, so you can't get 'em.

And then what makes Lou Malnati's?

And who likes the corn meal?

And I don't like this tomato sauce at this one.

Everybody has their opinion.

- [Narrator] Deep dish is a 100% Chicago creation.

And its creator, Ric Riccardo, was a free-spirited Italian artist who opened a successful bar near the city's Bohemian neighborhood.

- Ric Riccardo was kind of a bon vivant.

His exploits are written about in the newspaper.

- [Narrator] In 1942, Riccardo had a new wife and a new baby and had just moved them into an aging mansion close to his bar.

- [Monica] He lived at Ohio and Wabash.

He was on the third floor.

- [Steve] And then downstairs is the Pelican Club.

He wants to make a place with no music basically because he wants to be able to sleep at night.

- [Monica] And he says, "Darn it, I'm gonna buy that tavern so that it's nice and quiet.

I'm gonna have a nice family-style restaurant."

- [Narrator] The Pelican Club already had pizza ovens.

And Riccardo believed Chicagoans would be excited to try a new kind of pizza, one unlike anyone had seen before.

- [Steve] He finds these pans in the back, these cake pans, and they start pressing the dough into the bottom of the pan.

They press it up along the wall a little bit.

- And then you have your cheese, and then you have your sauce, which was different from a lot of pizzas where the cheese was the top bubbly layer.

- [Narrator] After a year of perfecting the recipe, he opened the doors of Riccardo's Pizzeria, and deep dish became an immediate sensation.

- These deep dish pizzas become popular.

They would have pictures of Riccardo with these celebrities holding up slices of these deep-dish pizzas.

- [Narrator] Eventually Chicago would have more than 100 deep-dish pizzerias.

Many opened by former cooks at Riccardo's, which came to be known as Pizzeria Uno.

But Riccardo's role as the sole creator of the pizza now synonymous with Chicago was nearly erased after his death.

Pizzeria Uno's new owner, Riccardo's business partner, Ike Sewell, took credit.

- There's a plaque in front of Unos that says, "This is where Ike Sewell created deep dish pizza, 1943."

That is not true.

Ric Riccardo created deep-dish pizza.

Now that we have the information, let's tell the truth.

(trumpet playing) ♪ Oh say, can we eat ♪ - [Narrator] Few dishes spark such Chicago pride as our deep dish pizza.

♪ Deep dish proudly inhaled ♪ - Deep dish pizza is quite good.

(audience laughing) (glass smashing) - [Narrator] But it does have its critics.

- Chicagoans are no doubt taking personal offense to the Daily Show host Jon Stewart's rant against our deep dish pizza.

- [News Anchor] Jon Stewart trashing our Chicago-style pizzas.

- Let me tell you something, this is not pizza.

This is tomato soup in a bread bowl.

- [Narrator] Love it or hate it, it's all Chicago.

- I had some recently, still a good pie.

So good.

(laughing) - [Narrator] While Chicago is famous for its delicious, yet humble creations, today it is celebrated as the home of renowned chefs, and some found their inspiration watching a cooking show on public television hosted by a new star in the food world.

- Welcome to "The French Chef."

I'm Julia Child.

- Julia came on, and I would spend every Wednesday night with this notebook, and I would write down everything that she would talk about and say, and she would give the ingredients.

- [Narrator] Child was skilled and disarming.

Her love for classic French food would set off a cultural revolution in dining.

- You flip anything, you really, you just have to have the courage of your convictions, particularly if it's sort of a loose mass like this.

Well, that didn't go very well.

- [Narrator] At the same time Child was introducing French cuisine to American palates, Chicagoans were craving something more.

Many found what they were looking for in suburban life.

This relocation of the middle class meant the end of the downtown restaurant and theater district.

- As people left the Loop again after World War II, with the move to the suburbs, then it was hollowed out.

Many of the old restaurants disappear.

- [Narrator] The neon-lit food palaces and theaters of the Loop that remain were soon bulldozed into a memory.

- [Monica] So in the late '60s, they decided to make something called the Civic Center, which was later named Daley Plaza.

And so they destroyed the entire block.

- [Narrator] Without a central dining district, one legendary French chef, Jean Banchet, took a leap in 1973 and launched Le Francais in a spot, not known for fine dining.

- But why Wheeling?

Why Wheeling, Illinois?

I mean that's really out there.

- [Narrator] The far northwest suburb of Wheeling was close to suburbanites who loved fine food and close to a small private airport that could whisk discriminating diners in and out.

- It was an airport not too far away.

- [John] Palwaukee, they fly in from downtown, Los Angeles- - Oh, they come, they fly from Texas, from all over, from New York.

- [Narrator] Jean Banchet's dishes were masterpieces of French cuisine, with elegant platings of meat, game, shellfish, and pates.

Bon Appetit Magazine declared Le Francais America's greatest restaurant.

- Le Francais was the greatest place I've ever worked to this day.

The quality, the ingredients, there was nothing like it.

- Once it took off, it was packed.

- [Narrator] Even Julia Child dined there.

- The first time I met her, she walked in the kitchen at Le Francais, and she had no fear.

She walked right behind the line and was dipping her fingers into the sauces and what are you making and all that.

- [Narrator] Banchet had shown Chicagoans were ready for serious dining.

And in the heart of the city, an unlikely restaurateur would turn out to be a trend setter.

- Gordon Sinclair was not a chef.

He was the personality of his restaurant.

- And he had a great palate.

- [Narrator] Sinclair was a dapper PR Man with great taste, but limited experience in restaurants.

In 1976, he opened a bistro named Gordon, in a seedy neighborhood just north of the Loop.

- [Monica] He opened between a leather bar and a dirty bookstore with a hotel across the street with rooms by the hour.

- [John] How did you have the courage or the insanity to do that?

Now, we'll call it courage.

- Well, yeah, courage.

That wasn't the word I think I remember.

But the rent was right.

It was interesting 'cause it, when you walked into the door, you immediately transformed into a space that was so opposite of what was outside.

- I remember the big giant curtains in the dining room.

- Beautiful, beautiful floral arrangements.

Your jaw dropped and you just said, "Whoa."

- [Narrator] Sinclair's gamble paid off.

The restaurant received rave reviews for its atmosphere and signature dishes.

Gordon's success in the iffy neighborhood emboldened a young Rick Bayless.

Long before his fame on TV, Bayless opened his first restaurant, Frontera Grill, across the street in 1987.

- And if Gordon had chosen to be in this neighborhood, it was okay that we were in this neighborhood as well.

- [Narrator] It would be the start of a decades long transformation of the River North neighborhood into a hot spot of fine dining.

That same year in Lincoln Park, another young ambitious chef opened an innovative restaurant that would make history.

His name was Charlie Trotter.

- I didn't know what I was doing.

You know, you begin something and you begin it with a love, and you just try to find ways to make it better and better.

- Charlie was noticed immediately out of the gate.

- [Narrator] Charlie Trotter was in a league of his own, offering the first multi-course tasting menu, elevating vegetarian options, crafting sophisticated wine pairings, and never repeating the same dish twice.

- Small, quiet dining room.

- And the service was almost invisible.

And then here's this cuisine that is just like landing from outer space, but is so refined and so delicious.

- [Steve] What Trotter was really doing at his height was just putting the most beautiful ingredients on the plate and letting them speak for themselves.

- That one small plate, that just like two bites, was planned to be like dynamite in your mouth.

Man, that one bite was revolutionary.

- You were tasting things that you'd never tasted before.

- It was a drizzle, something that was an infusion.

It was a natural broth that was enriched.

- [Narrator] Trotter showcased the freshest and finest ingredients, including a little known seedling called a microgreen that added intense flavor and visual appeal.

- There's a story about Trotter being at Chef's Garden, and he sees like the 21 day herb of something, but it's only 7 days, so it's not ready yet.

"Oh, let me try it anyway."

And he tries it.

And says, "Oh, this is good.

We should serve this."

- Farmers change the way that they grew produce to accommodate Charlie Trotter.

Now, I use microgreens at my barbecue restaurant.

- [Narrator] Trotter almost single-handedly redefined fine dining in Chicago.

- He put Chicago on the map.

I mean, he won over the city, and then he won over the world.

- [Narrator] Trotter had honed his craft apprenticing in the finest kitchens around America.

Now, he attracted the country's finest young talent to work at his restaurant.

- The chefs that have come to Chicago to work with Charlie Trotter and then ultimately opened their restaurants, they came because of him.

- We always try to advise the young chefs in our kitchen that you're only gonna make great food if you can invest your emotion and your concentration and your intellect into your work.

You can make something that has some soul to it.

- [Narrator] Thanks to culinary visionaries like Trotter and those who followed, Chicago did become a great restaurant city.

And its ongoing culinary creativity was the reason the James Beard Awards came to Chicago in 2015.

- I really believe that the Beard Awards being in Chicago has very much cemented Chicago as a dining destination.

- [Narrator] The Annual Beard Awards are often called the Oscars of the restaurant world.

- It brings in chefs from all over the world, foodies from all over the world every year, to highlight our food, to highlight the beautiful Civic Opera House and turns us into the center of food.

- And the winner is, Beard Award goes to- - Goes to.

- I've had the honor of presenting an award.

I've never been nominated for a Beard Award.

I would love to.

I'm the Bob Hope of food.

- [Narrator] Today, Chicago is celebrated as a great food city, a place where both cheap eats and culinary innovation thrive, where putting a Chicago spin on classic foods has created the stuff of legend.

- When we talk about, you know, being in Chicago, it's about the food.

It's about avant-garde food.

It's about neighborhood food.

- I don't know of any other city in America where you can have a pierogi, and then travel about 25 minutes and have a three-star Michelin dinner.

And I think it's because of our diversity in the people.

- [Narrator] And it is the people who have forged Chicago's distinctive food culture, people who have come from all over the world and put their hearts and souls into creating the food that we celebrate today.

- Food is connection, and connection is love.

That's that bridge that makes us realize we're really not that different at all.

- [Narrator] And with so many tempting choices around every corner, the toughest decision may be, what to eat first!

- We just get food dead on and then I taste it in other places and I say, "Wow, they should do what we're doing in Chicago."

(playful music)