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Chicago is overflowing with fantastic food, a majority of which is not conducive to maintaining a healthy weight or preventing cholesterol from clinging for dear life to the inside of our arteries. Contrary to the reputation of a dietitian, we cannot easily conjure the name of a single food that we would forbid from touching our lips. That said, eating a healthy diet is necessary to preventing disease, avoiding weight gain, and feeling happy and energetic. Here are a few strategies to help you navigate your way around Chicago’s equally glorious and treacherous culinary landscape.
MAKE WISE CHOICES: Whenever possible, preview a restaurant’s menu online before booking your reservation. For example, by opting for traditional Mexican or Italian cuisine, you set yourself up for the challenge of extracting the few healthy options from a menu of less than stellar, albeit good-tasting, foods. In general, Thai, Japanese, and Mediterranean cuisine is more likely to offer up lighter, leaner, vegetable-rich fare and contain far less heart un-healthy saturated fat.
CHANNEL YOUR INNER LOCALVORE: As the “localvore” movement permeates our city, many restaurants are putting forth admirable efforts to serve fresh, seasonal produce and locally-raised meat and poultry whenever possible. Check out Mado, the Bristol, and Avec, to name a few, for wholesome locally-rooted cuisine. Whenever possible, eat more plants and less meat. Check out markets like Green Grocer Chicago, that specialize in local, organic foods and limit the guess-work you confront when shopping at traditional grocery stores. Read “Animal, Vegetable Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver for a big inspiration.
AAAH, EVERYTHING IN MODERATION: The cliché by which we live and a concept requiring little explanation. Pizza is not forbidden, however we emphatically suggest you avoid the deep-dish variety, in favor of a thin-crust pie. Nutritionally-speaking, we can muster virtually no redeeming qualities of deep-dish. We hate it! The delicate, crispy thin-crust pizza produced by Coalfire in Chicago is our go-to pie. Cooked in a wood-fired oven and adorned with a delicate amount of cheese and toppings, Coalfire is making pizza that is delicious and relatively healthy. Best when eaten with a fresh, green salad.
— Megan Tempest
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It's not too far from my house, so I go to Coalfire once a week and after a couple months of doing so, I find the thought of eating pizza from anywhere else unappetizing.
My vote for best pizza in the city!
What is this Hippie nonsense?
The way to eat better is to eat locally, but check out all the vietnamese and thai restaurants? You think those places, outside of the ones that serve to upmarket nervous white people (oh god! My triglycerides!) are really getting in on being locavores?
And the locavore thing is horseshit anyway. There's no discernible difference in terms of health in eating an apple from Madison or one from Maine. You want to talk environmental impact? Sure, it's a nice gesture. But like consumer recycling, it's a gesture, not a solution to anything. But this kind of hippie/veggie tends toward the feel good, not quantifiable results
Coalfire is AWFUL pizza. Just godawful. If you're going to eat pizza, eat some real goddamn pizza.
Austerity for the sake of longevity is all well and good, but self-denial reaches a point of masochism when you pass up proper Chicago deep-dish in favor of some mozzarella on a cracker.
Give me Spacca Napoli (actual *real* pizza) over Chicago deep-dish (aka lasagna) any day.
And the locavore thing is horseshit anyway. There's no discernible difference in terms of health in eating an apple from Madison or one from Maine.
I don't think that's the point.
I smell a debate coming on about the merits of deep-dish pizza. Should be productive.
I posit that any pizza that goes best with a green salad is not proper pizza. I have had no fewer than six people tell me about cracker-crust pizza with the hushed tones of someone describing an AIDS vaccine. Next fad: high-end Hot Pockets.
I've not been to Coalfire but I've looked I've seen/read about them online. It's not "cracker-crust" pizza.
Nothing wrong with thin-crust pizza. I tend to prefer it myself. But Chicago Deep-Dish, that is the holy of holies. Seriously, a slice of Gino's East deep dish is about as close to perfection as we humans have come in the past 2 million years.
Deep dish was invented by a Texan. It is enjoyed heartily by tourists and people from Lombard.
I always wondered where this attitude came from. I grew up here, as did most of my friends. We occasionally enjoy a deep-dish pizza. It's not exactly something I regularly indulge in, but I don't go slagging it off as tourist fare either. I mean, if that's tourist food, is the Chicago-style hot dog as well? Is Italian beef? If I had to guess, I'd say the antipathy comes from all the out of towners in line downtown at Uno and Due.
I'm a lifelong Chicagoan, but I have a host of cousins who grew up in the burbs and though we share a common grandparent, we might as well have grown up in different universes. Their vision of Chicago is basically downtown and "the ghetto" (read, anywhere there are more brown people than white) and Chicago food is essentially pizza. These aren't folks who will check out Humboldt Park markets for fresh chayote.
They want the experience of Chicago in a distilled, simple form. Something to keep the kids quiet and get them back to River Forest unscathed.
Doesn't mean Deep-Dish isn't fucking heavenly though.
I don't know anyone who eats deep dish pizza, and my family is from Chicago. I'd say a Chicago hot dog or Italian Beef is much more quintessentially "Chicago" than these bready, hyped up "pizzas" that you can buy just about anywhere in the world. I put deep dish pizza in the same category as Navy Pier and Garrett's.
Agreed on Navy Pier and Garrett's. I'll also say that a good Italian beef is impossible to find away from Chicago. I suppose it's just a matter of personal experience. I do enjoy being able to come home at 3 in the morning and order a deep dish from Chicago's. At that point, I'm clearly not worried about nutrition.
-Deep Dish is a meal in a slice. Really, one, maybe two slices should lay you out like an etherized patient. You can't eat it on the move, hell, you shouldn't move while eating it. It's an experience.
-NY slice is to go food. Fold it, eat it walking or at a game.
-Crust/Coalfire and other assorted "high-class" pizza places are just peddling hippie bullshit. "Oh, it's on wheat bread, with flax and bran and locally sourced sourdough nuggets and pork that died after a long and fulfilling farm life?" kind of stuff. Generally costs twice as much as actual pizza, tastes like hospital food and is served by someone who looks as if you urinated on Mother Theresa when you ask for a Coke.
Is Coalfire hippie? I just looked at the menu and it looks pretty straight-forward. Ok maybe goat cheese is hippie.
Goat Cheese is hippie.
I ate there a couple months back, the aesthetic (long wait times, lots of explaining the process) just rubbed me the wrong way. It's fucking pizza, if you're explaining that concept to me you're doing it wrong.
Life is complex, keep your food simple.
Goat Cheese is hippie.
Yeah, that feta is some real far out stuff, man.
Haha had to jump in on this thread after reading what jess_nevins wrote. First off the pizza debate - there are different ways to make a pizza and people like different styles. Some styles have been around longer than others but eat the style you like.
But the utter hatred you have for Coalfire is hilarious. To be clear, I love Coalfire pizza (a Neopolitan style pizza). I haven't ever seen flax seed, bran, etc. on their menu, so you might be confusing them with another place.
Goat cheese isn't hippie. Wait, what's your definition of hippie? To me a hippie is someone who rejects society, but if you like goat cheese you're embracing other societies. Italian and Mediterranean foods are similar so you can easily cross ingredients.
It's just a balance of dough, cheese, sauce, and toppings. Balance it however you want but don't judge other's for their balance.
"Embrace"?
Hippie. Nuff said.
Haha ok then use the word "open", if you're going to pick on a word. So it's ok to like Italian food but hippie to like Mediterranean food?
Pizza is not Italian. It's PIZZA.
(Seriously, I lived in Florence, American "Italian" food is about as close close to authentic Italiano as Slurm cola)
Pizza as we know it was invented in the Naples area. I had pizza in Naples and I think the people in these neighborhood joints would whoop your ass if you called them 'hippies'. Closest place we've got to this kind of amazing pizza is Spacca Napoli.
Napoli è una fogna aperta paragonata a firenze
You may think so but is my point wrong? You've pretty much got nothing but extremely unclever childish insults lately.
Illuminare su. Il cielo è grigio, i giorni sono brevi, ed errerei piuttosto il Palazzo Capponi
Only fancy hippy wannabe Euro-trash go live 'abroad' in Florence...
hippie bullshit or not, i think crust is pretty tasty. the food there is organic, but it's not flax and bran health food. they have calzones, blt's, cheese pizza, and potato chips on the menu.
I just want to point out that making this post in the guise of a "nutritional advice" piece may have been an interesting and fun way to frame a post about local options, but the author's advice is hilariously bad and out of touch with what is actually healthful.
Best to educate yourself on what's actually reported in medical studies vs. what's mindlessly reposted over and over in the media. More like more of both, less of everything else. Again, studies.Look, there is no healthy pizza option. Just eat it in moderation. What a ridiculous way to frame a recommendation for Coalfire! (Not too poo poo the rec, Coalfire rules!)
Let it be known: Jess Nevins has some strong opinions on pizza.
LOL
I'm hungry. And most of the foodie stuff on here is over my pay grade.
I must agree with your KISS attitude toward pizza. when one starts to get into the arugula/artichoke/eggplant camp, I tune out immediately. fuck that noise.
Eggplants on Pizza is the sign of a diseased mind.
I don't support the death penalty, but for that crime, I could be swayed.
What's with this devotion to some personal definition you have for pizza? It's dough, sauce, and cheese.
How is eggplant fancy? I don't understand what you're saying. Is it the fact that someone is charging $15 for a pizza with eggplant or is it the eggplant itself. I can make a great pizza with eggplant at home for $5.
I'm just fucking with you a little. Yeah, I don't really go for the high end pizza joints either. Pizza, to me, is supposed to be simple. Ive been to Spacca Napoli (sp?) and the pizza was...ok in my opinion. Didn't really like the uncooked arugala on the top of the one we ordered and as I looked around that's how most of the pizzas they make there come, with some uncooked shrubbery on top. It was good, but I haven't felt the need to go back. I'm more partial to Apart pizza...crust, cheese, sauce, a few extras. Simple and pretty damn tasty.
I'm by no means a foodie (jesus, what a stupid term) but I dig watching a cook show every now and then. I saw something with Anthony Bourdain where he was in some strangers kitchen and asked to make a "quick lunch" for some family. He Just grabbed a handful of ingredients, some cheese, some oil, made a simple crust, and put it in the over. Out came this delicious-looking, cheese and veggie pizza. No need for a trip to the organic/fair-trade/Commie-pinko market to get swiss peppers or Russian onions. Basic, hands on, simple food.
Fancy people need fancy pizza. Fancy people are just hippies with money.
Only fancy rich hippies have cable. Fancy people need fancy television.
I don't own a television.
No TV??? That's a crunchy-granola-birkenstock-wearing hippie move.
Nah "sensitive artist" like the King Missle song.
Yeesh, King Missile? You are old.
The kids these days have computers Magic boxes that hippies get scared of cause they like, can track you and stuff.
No need for cable or big wooden sets in the sitting parlor. Plenty of room to install that wood-fired oven.
Jess is watching his big flatscreen hdtv and loling up a storm over hilarity of the The Cleveland Show as we speak.
Navin, you and humor are ill-suited. The Cleveland Show? Come on, that's a slow pitch. You want to call someone crass, you throw out a "Cougartown" or an "American Dad" The former is just the height of bad tv, while the latter gives you the Seth McFarlane wheelhouse, but with even more of a low-rent vibe.
And you want to make it a 60" plasma. Or better yet, chuck it all and have me firing up the 360, popping on my wireless headset and digging in to some TF2.
Specificity is comedy old man. Didn't they cover that at your 8 Week "Improve for Anybody!" class a the learning annex?
Improving yourself is a good thing!
You may not care for it but what you mostly get there pizza wise is what you'd get in pizzerias in Naples. Average, working class, regular pizzerias. 2 of the 12 pizzas on the Spacca Napoli menu have arugula.
2 of the 12 pizzas on the Spacca Napoli menu have arugula.
I said that other pizzas I saw there came with SOME type of leafy foliage on top, not just arugla. Rapini? And I actually like arugala...in a salad.
And like the link I posted to the Naples pizza website...THAT is how I prefer my pie. Simple.
Color me confused then, because they have the same pizza's at S.N., you just ordered the one of the two that comes with arugula.
Website for a pizza place in Naples, just for comparison's sake
Antica Pizzeria
I do not intend to wade into the pizza debate. However, to those in our fair city (and my building) who order delivery from Domino's or Pizza Hut: seriously, fuck you. That's like going to Kansas City and eating Famous Dave's BBQ or Rome and eating at Olive Garden.
Uhm, what are we sixteen? Screw Pizza lets talk Thai. So there I was last Sunday sitting down in a Logan Square joint for yet another bad Thai meal.
I mean aren't they all bad once you've been? Except for that place far down on Western Street across from the El, but that's just too far to get too most of the time.
Any way, I'm getting the rest of my food to go, because I just don't feel like leaving both appetizer ( nasty)and my main meal basically(o.K. but bland) uneaten on the table. See, I don't want to insult this new owner because at least she's nice, unlike the fat battle lax who owned the joint( that failed) previously ! Any way, as I'm leaving I notice that she, the cooks and the rest of the staff are sitting down to eat right next to me, and what they have looks good!
They're eating some sort of sticky yellowish rice, making balls with it and eating with with their hands along side some dishes that look amazing and smell even better!
And I say yo! What's that!?! And the women said, "oh its just burning hot smelly country food from back home that we eat."
Well next time I'm asking for the burning hot smelly country food that they eat!
Now that's eating SMART! And that's one to grow on!
Spoon Thai on Western. Curry Noodles are perfection and they will cook it 'like thai' meaning spicy as hell. Though if you're not eating at Arun's at least once a month, you're not looking for good thai food in Chicago
I love that after ripping on "high class" pizza all day and "fancy" people, you state that if we aren't eating at Arun once a month we aren't looking for good thai food. Arun's where the 12 course chef's design menu costs $85 per person. I am sure Arun's is as great as I hear it is and that it is worth the money, but I can't justify paying $85 for dinner at this point. It sounds awfully fancy.
*Sigh* Never said there is anything wrong with fancy eats. Man, I have the Alinea book, I've eaten at MOTO (and didn't pay for it, bless you wonderful clients!) and I regularly tuck in at the best sushi place in Chicago, Tanoshii on north Clark.
Fancy hippie shit is when you take something like Pizza and try to dress it up as something which, functionally, it is not. Putting prawns or sweet baby ray's sauce on a pizza is just show-off nonsense. It's not gastro-cuisine, it's not playful foodie fun, it's just using ingredients better suited for a different meal in a way that distorts the form. It's lazy cooking, theatrical cookery. And it's usually under the guise of this "slow-food" locavore, I only consume water-vapor from my own biomass hippie bullshit.
Pay for fancy food, it's good and good for you. But dressing up a pie as an assault on the bastions of bourgeoisie pallets is just douchebaggery writ large.
Putting prawns or sweet baby ray's sauce on a pizza is just show-off nonsense. It's not gastro-cuisine, it's not playful foodie fun, it's just using ingredients better suited for a different meal in a way that distorts the form. It's lazy cooking, theatrical cookery. And it's usually under the guise of this "slow-food" locavore, I only consume water-vapor from my own biomass hippie bullshit.
I'd be the first to agree with you about doing such offensive things to pizza, but again we find you talking utter nonsense. No place mentioned here (coalfire/Spacca) does such things to their pizzas, in fact we find that both pizzerias do completely traditional pies. Again you've dug yourself into a hole by talking B.S. and finding that you can't back up what you've said...thus the amateur insults.
Oh and big laughs at you buying a fucking book about a fancy restaurant and then pontificating about "high class" pretensions. I don't know which is worse: the hippies your feeble mind has conjured up, or the kind of yuppie trash that so desperately tries to distinguish themselves (and broadcast their class) by purchasing such frivolous symbolic items.
Yes we are arguing about pizza!
That's the name of that joint! Seriously it reminds me of southern Thailand. I love the spicy squid in red sauce. Finally actually spicy in Chicago, where every Thai resturant taste the same.
Yea admittedly I've never been to Aruns, But while I will pluck down 85 bucks for Ruth Crisp or French, I can't do it for Thai as that remind me of white folks who go to Africa and purchase amazing art work for real cheap to sell at real expensive prices in the states just to get rich.
And come on Jess N ease up on Coal Fire, I mean at lest they're not eating at Olive Garden any more. Their parents( and siblings who never left the burbs) still are, but since moving to BuckTown, Ukie Village, Wicker Park, etc, are all urbane in their ways
Speaking of Olive Garden, there's this ad on Hulu wherein some parents come to take their college-age daughter out to dinner and end up taking her and her friends to Olive Garden.
I can't imagine the social stigma of a kid whose parents drag their child and friends to that loathsome hellhole. Seriously, any place that loads you up on bread and salad is trying to hide how bad their food is.
Sure it's awful, but you get so much!
I used to wait tables in a Chinese restaurant...believe me the "employee meal" every night was waaay better and more authentic than anything you'd find on the menu.
jess_nevins> Please for the love of god, shove a fat thick crust pizza in your mouth and stfu. Your uneducated and immature comments are not wanted here. Really the coal fire menu is too confusing? Here is a link can someone please tell me what the f-- is soo confusing? And expensive? My girlfriend and I eat there for about $25. Please don't call yourself a Chicagoan, it's embarrassing.
STFU? U R telling ME 2 STFU?
OMG U R ZO GY!
LOL BRB PPO!
*Ahem* Sorry, I don't mean to disparage the joint you and your girlfriend enjoy. I mean, it's a nice place for you girls to sit, have a pelligrino, do each other's hair and just, y'know, exhale.
lol. Very cute sweetheart. Very cute.
Jess is on one of his Parkour tirades. All who disagree are wrong. I've never been to Coalfire, but their menu looks about as basic as you can get. It's weird that someone who's been to -- lived in ! -- Italy would trash what looks to me like straight up Neopolitan style pizze. I could understand if Jess Albany Parkour Nevins was trashing, say, the awful flatbreads at Charlie's Ale house, but a place like Coalfire? I second Apart, by the way. Good stuff. I liked Spacca, but they're expensive and the last time I went I was underwhelmed. Antica has been hit or miss for me. Great Lake I will never do. For "Chicago" pizza, I like the thin crust at Pizano's. Some people don't like cornmeal crust ... I'm not one of those people. Oh and Home Run Inn makes the best frozen pizza. I think the secret ingredient is the five sticks of butter their crusts must contain. I like to buy a frozen cheese and dress it with bizarre "hippie" ingredients like fresh basil, pecorino, ham, et al. I wash it down with farm-raised, artisinal water.
I dig how obsessed you are with seeing everything I post as some absolutist statement of pure principle. I was bored and hungry and taking a bit of the piss.
No, really, I'm ready for a monkey knife fight over pizza.
Lou Malnatis, 7pm, thin vs deep dish, two crusts enter, one crust leaves.
And no, I'm not Albany Parkor, for the BILLIONTH time.
Navin, what's your endgame here? To prove that I'm taking the piss about fancified pizza and I also like fancy eats?
Ok. You got me. Is that it?
I still think all this talk of fancy pizza is hippie bullshit. And I still love a meticulously designed gastronomical affair. Oh noes! I iz Hippo-crit!
If the pizza was actually "fancy" as you have declared then you might have a point. Mostly you just come across as incoherent and obnoxious. You see, the bizarre "hippie" talk just doesn't make any sense, so your attempt at "taking the piss" (didn't realize you were English *groan*)just falls flat.
And yes you are a hypocrite, somebody who actively takes part in serious yuppie pretensions and then accuses others of being "fancy" or "high class" is quite hypocritical.
Man, are you playing Matilda in drag Navin?
OMG! I used a British expression! OMG! I "took the piss" and groused about the state of "traditional" Chicago style Pizza! OMG! I am a huge and horrible hypocrite. OMG! You've discovered all the cracks in a nonsense argument about pizza! I am so gotten!
And you're a humorless killjoy asshole.
You... win?
I'm sorry I hurt your feelings Jess. Considering the whole insult comic thing you're trying to roll with here, I thought you'd be able to take it as well as you dish it out.
Well, see Navin, you're not funny. You didn't, nor can you, hurt my feelings. But you can ruin the fun jokey, lets get pissy about pizza vibe with your scrutinizing.
You're the guy who asks if the chicken crossing the road has been vaccinated for avian flu. You're thick.
Poor Jess, get's called out on his jag-offery and cries for his woobie.
As a long time Chicagoist reader I'm going to use my first comment to voice my genuine dislike for almost every commenter on this otherwise quality site.
Seriously, only the likes of Jess Nevins and Co. can ruin an innocent discussion of area Thai food and pizza.
Popped your cherry pitching a bitch.
Welcome to the party. Please undress slowly.
Figured bitching about something of little importance is a good way to fit in around here. Who am I kidding, I love that shit as much as the next person. Carry on.
You people are all on crack. For me, it doesn't get any better than this really cozy pizza joint I know at North and Western. Their pizza is da bomb.
i know that place. it really has that family owner neighborhood type feel. and now they have wings!
North and Western? I know that place too, the address is at 1601 N. Western and it is called Pizza Hut. And they did just add wings, through their Wing Street label.
This place is nice and cozy. And the best part is if you are say, anywhere else on Earth, there is also a Pizza Hut right nearby so you can enjoy the same cozy feeling. No word on if every location has wings, but I hope so!
we have some nice trolling going on and it seems people are trying to be adults about things. Stupid adults, don't realize the internet is for kids and jackassery.
Anyway falco's on california and archer. That's the greaseball pizza for me.