Hiphopnerd

After I graduated college, I commenced my actual adult life by...moving back into my parents' house and returning to same job I'd had since high school. I worked for my uncle at a major brokerage firm, so at least it was related to my major. But even with a Finance degree in hand, I remained an hourly employee- and not even a full-time one. Among my most important job functions, which I’ve been sure to emphasize on every resume I’ve ever sent out since, was lunch gopher. Yes, I had the exceedingly important responsibility of procuring lunch for my uncle, a few other brokers in the office, and myself. Unsurprisingly, it was a pretty steady rotation of fast food and sandwiches from the same dozen places. I didn’t really mind the repetition- the cuisine matched my limited palate and they bought my lunch most days.

Nevertheless, I was understandably excited when I moved to the city and found a job downtown in 2003. I had an apartment and could finally call myself a resident of Chicago instead of suburbia...I finally had a real salary...and I also had a whole new world of lunch places open to me- hundreds of restaurants within quick walking distance, surely with more variety than the suuburbs offered. I was eager to start the task of exploring my new culinary surroundings,

Lunch running for my uncle did result in a re-appreciation for the humble hot dog- a food I loved as a kid, but avoided during high school and college, probably because of all the ‘Ewwwww…do you know what goes in those?’ stories. So locating a good hot dog stand was among my first priorities. I found a promising-looking place and tried it immediately…and it was thoroughly mediocre. Not quite bad, but more disappointing…and I was probably still suffering some sticker shock from the price differences of things too. But that mediocre meal led to a brilliant thought- there are thousands of people who work downtown. Surely one of those thousands has written something about the various hot dogs in the Loop area. I mean, we were all already using the internet to research electronics and books… there had to be some hot dog research out there on the web too!

I don’t recall the exact term I googled…it was probably ‘chicago hot dog loop’…but the results led me to a site named Chowhound. It was a message board for food & restaurant discussion with specific pages for various major cities, including Chicago. I scrolled through the topics excitedly, looking for mention of hot dogs. But Chowhound’s site design was a leftover from the mid 1990’s, complete with extraordinarily frustrating navigation (note- the site was finally redesigned when Cnet purchased it). The index page listed about 500 message subjects, but to view the actual content of a message, you had to click each one individually. Reading the various topics was a complete chore, there was no search function, and to top it off- messages didn't have permanent links and were subject to displacement with the addition of new messages & topics. I did manage to find one user’s attempt at providing an index of answers to frequently asked questions like ‘where’s the best pizza?’ and ‘what’s near Grant Park?’

Here I finally found mention of hot dog stands… Superdawg, Gene & Judes, Poochie’s, & Wolfy’s all sounded wonderful, but they were nowhere near the Loop, and thus didn’t help me during my lunch break. I added the site to my bookmarks anyway and began to visit whenever I wanted to read about a specific restaurant or if I was just bored. The wealth of information and knowledge was staggering. I found posts about events called Beefathons- people would meet up on a Saturday afternoon and then drive around to 8 or more Italian Beef stands in the metro area, sampling their products, rating them on a number of different criteria (beef, bread, gravy, peppers) and aiming to crown the best Italian beef sandwich in Chicago. ‘How ridiculous is that?’, I thought…’no, wait…how awesome is that?’

Occasionally, posts included links to a different website. I ignored these for a while, but curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I clicked over to LTHforum.com. It was Chicago-centric and used modern software….its search function worked…and perhaps best of all, there were pictures embedded in the posts. Turns out some of the most prominent & prolific Chicago chowhound contributors had had enough of the crappy software, as well as enough of the moderators strict enforcement of vague rules, and they decided to forge out on their own. Compared to the other site, it was an absolute joy to read and use. I was soon visiting multiple times a day. I’d arrived looking for information about one of the cheapest, least gourmet foods around…but the quality discussion and information I found almost obligated me to start reading the other posts. Jibartos? Alinea vs Moto? The history of the ‘mother-in-law’ sandwich? Suddenly, everything culinary related was intriguing! And the pictures… close-ups of beautiful BBQ brisket, studies of succulent sushi. My mind went into overdrive, creating a database of places to check out and foods that sounded especially intriguing.

Quite simply, Chowhound & LTHforum changed the way I approached eating. I realized it was more than a simple biological necessity…each and every meal should be savored & enjoyed. This resulted in a resolution of sorts- to never eat a bad meal again. Whether it was street food or fine dining, this new resource provided the information to find the best, and avoid the average and just plain bad. Every single meal I ate could be amazing…why wouldn’t I want that?

I began dragging my friends and family to the places I’d read about and wanted to try. If it was something simpler, like the consensus best Italian beef in the Chicago area, I was more than willing to make a 20 mile & hour long round-trip solo pilgrimage. Vacation & trip planning was incomplete without researching my destination’s dining options and local specialty foods. Knowing how much time I spent reading about restaurants, my friends began asking for recommendations and suggestions…and they usually came back happy with my answers. I learned the right way to pronounce foie gras and prix fixe. My dining resume grew steadily as I adding Turkish, Korean, & Argentinean cuisine…and now includes a $200/per person 10 course meal made up of things like liquid nitrogenized fruit and edible paper.

I never really saw it coming. The kid that subsisted primarily on cheeseburgers & pizza somehow morphed into a foodie. And it was all due to that one fateful day 4 years ago, when I went looking for a hot dog near my new office…

Of course, I still haven’t found a good hot dog in the Loop.