Take My Mother-in-Law Sandwich . . . Please: Putting on the Feedbag in Chicago [by Jamie Katz]

        photo by Peter Pawinski

 The people of Chicago, that stormy, husky, brawling kind of town, sure know how to tie on the feed bag. Has any other American city patented so many signature foods? There's deep-dish pizza, smoky Polish sausages, Italian beef sandwiches au jus, and, of course, the classic Chicago-style hot dog: pure Vienna Beef on a warm poppy-seed bun with mustard, relish, pickled peppers, onions, tomato slices, a quartered dill pickle and a dash of celery salt. Alter the formula (or ask for ketchup) and you can head right back to Coney Island, pal. For       better or worse, it was Chicago that transformed the Midwest's vast bounty of grains, livestock and dairy foods into Kraft cheese, Cracker Jack and Oscar Mayer wieners. And in recent years, emerging from its role as chuck wagon to the masses, Chicago finally bulled its way into the hallowed precincts of haute cuisine, led by renowned chefs Charlie Trotter, Rick Bayless and Grant Achatz, who's one of the forerunners of a movement known as molecular gastronomy. "They hate the term, but that's how people refer to it," says Mike Sula, a food columnist for the weekly Chicago Reader. "They like to call it 'techno-emotional cuisine.'" But does it taste good? "Oh yeah," he says.

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