That’s right, Chicago Pizza Tours is celebrating 2 years since we took our first guided tour of guests out for the best tasting tour in Chicago!  I can’t believe that it has been 2 years, so many people to thank so lets get started.

Customers

Many bouquets thrown in your direction for being some of the nicest, loyal, and most entertaining people I have ever met.  Obviously we cannot do our job without having an outstanding and growing customer base (More thank 4500 of you) and we really appreciate each and every one.  Side note, thank you for all the reviews on Trip Advisor and Yelp! sharing your stories puts a smile on my face.

Restaurants

Fortunately for the group mentioned above, myself and the guides do not make the pizza!  That is where the restaurants come in, from delivering piping hot delicious pies, and providing seats as well as access into your kitchens to show the true pizza fanatic a “backstage pass”, I can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done.

Zerve

In order for us to really focus on the customers experience and provide the very best service, we rely on a third party ticketing company, Zerve Inc.  They are outstanding and are a major asset in taking a complicated part of our job and simplifying it.  I probably don’t tell you enough, but thank you for your outstanding service to both our customers and to Chicago Pizza Tours Zerve team.

Employees

To everyone that has worked for us, whether in the guide capacity or driver capacity, to all those who labored on our beloved Dough Force One vehicle, thank you for your service and professionalism.

Peers

In this wild business, it is great to meet people who run similar companies.  2 years ago before opening Chicago Pizza Tours I made what I call an “emergency trip” to New York to take a tour with Scott’s Pizza Tours.  It was an eye opening learning experience and Scott Wiener is a constant inspiration to improve my pizza knowledge and passion every day.  When in New York, you are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t book with him for a tour.  Not to be missed in this is also the incredible relationship Milwaukee Food Tours and I have established.  Theresa and Wade run a great company with many awesome tours including a pizza tour and we’ve had some amazing conversations that have helped us foster a better business.

Press

To any members of the media and PR world that picked up on what we are doing and helped showcase it to the world, many thanks.  Especially to those at PMQ, Pizza Today, Slice, and pizzamarketplace.com for helping me gain attention in the pizza industry.  Also ABC, Fox, The Local Tourist, Chicago Bites, PoshPorts, and other local press that helped us establish our name.

Family & Friends

If you’ve ever started a business, this thank you is a big one.  To my extended family for putting up with the most chaotic lifestyle ranging from insane work hours both tour giving and office work related, to the family members who have watched my son while I scramble back and forth from tour to tour.  To the ones who have booked tours (and actually paid for them haha) and spread the good word of what we are doing, THANK YOU.  To my wife for putting up with a pizza/work obsessed husband, for supporting my dream, and for helping me dot the I’s and cross the T’s on everything while keeping the home in our new normal…  Love you, couldn’t do any of this without you.

Jon Porter – owner

Full on pictures of just about everything I did can be found here.

Tuesday 3/13/12

8:57am arrive at McCarran International – main goal AVOID Cinnabon

9:42am walk into Hard Rock Hotel and try to check into a room, not gonna happen at that time, nothing is ready for me.  Head to the Lucky 24/7 Cafe for steal cut oatmeal and coffee.  This is important because this would be the only non pizza item I would eat until I get back to Chicago

10:38am checked into the room and on my way to the convention center for my 1st experience at the International Pizza Expo

Approximately 6 football fields full of pizza and pizza related products.  Everything from equipment including the latest advancements in ovens (especially the new electric ovens which if you are taking the tour… please ask me about these, lets talk about steam) to different tomato suppliers, cheese suppliers, flour, etc.  Full on competitions and of course so many booths have people making pizza for attendees to try.

1:34pm time to sit in for a class on Neapolitan pizza making with none other than Franco Pepe.  Now he doesn’t speak english, but fortunately a translator was on hand and this was mostly about watching and studying.

After the seminar it was more floor walking and just taking it all in.  This was day 1 and needed to get ready for a jam packed day tomorrow, oh and of course an evening of pizza eating tonight as well.  Pizza crawl with Milwaukee Food Tour’s owners coming up, they operate a pizza tour on Saturdays so if you are in Milwaukee or nearby, do yourself a favor and check it out.

6:48pm Pizza Crawl with Theresa & Wade of Milwaukee Food Tour

We started out at Metro Pizza owned by John Arena Jr and his cousin Sam Facchini.  This is honestly my favorite pizza joint in Las Vegas.  We are off the strip, the pizza is delicious, and this place is like a shrine to quality pizza across the country.  They have a map of the United States on the wall that pays respects to quality pizzerias across the country (Uno’s & Home Run Inn were a couple that represented Chicago).  If you visit these pizzerias and take a picture of yourself in front of them, Metro will give you a $25 gift certificate.  John says “We’re the only place that pays you to go try other pizzerias!”

Above we have the restaurant (love the no need for an area code), a NY Style cheese pizza, bottom a New Haven style clams pizza, and then one of my favorites… the Sicilian.

Next we headed to Otto which is on the 2nd floor of the Venetian.  Otto is owned by Mario Batali (sr.) and features some of the best pepperoni in the country.  I felt that the crust lacked salt but the reason for that may have been because the pepperoni did not.  The balance of a less salty dough and a very salty pepperoni just happened to work out nice.  Featured below are shots of Chicago Pizza Tours & Milwaukee Food Tours dining at both Metro and then Otto

Conclude day one, side note – I am up around $200 from having to play craps while waiting to head out to Metro.

Wednesday 3/14/12

No time for oatmeal this morning, and quite honestly no room because I have a pretty good idea for what I am in store for today.

8:49am  Arrive at my seminar with Tony Gemignani to see how he prepares NY Style, Roman Thick, and Roman Thin crust pizza.  It is a good thing I am there 11 minutes early because apparently there was so much to cover he actually started about 20 minutes early meaning I missed some stuff

There were some really great things discussed that I was able to take away from this seminar, first we got into the types of tomatoes that Tony likes to use and I was relieved to hear that he uses mostly tomato brands from Stanislaus.  I am relieved because I know full well that many of the pizzerias we visit on the tour use them.  Did I mention that Tony Gemignani is a 11 time world pizza champion?  Trust me he has some major pizza credentials.  Anyways moving on he starts talking about the importance of using Grande cheese in all his restaurants, again BAM a huge sigh of relief as most every pizzeria we visit uses Grande.  They are by far the most expensive and with good reason.  We even covered the whole 99% cheese / 1% cellulose and how drastically different that can be from 100% cheese.  Anyway, this is what a pizza seminar looks like

Now it may not be the prettiest slice of pizza you’ve ever seen, but that Round Sicilian slice pictured above was one of my top 5 all time tasting slices.  It stuck with me after several pizzas later and I am now on a mission to find an amazing Round Sicilian Slice in Chicago.

The rest of the day was spent walking the floor with John Arena the owner of Pizza Metro and Scott Wiener the owner of Scott’s Pizza Tours.  If you are unfamiliar with Scott’s Pizza Tours, I highly, highly, highly recommend that if you are in NY and you are even thinking about eating some pizza… you book a ticket with his tour at the start of your trip!  He has forgotten more about pizza than most anyone will ever know!  Here are some show shots:

Deep fried, Neapolitan style pizza it was hot for a while.

Below you will find a shot of Milwaukee Food Tours, Scott’s Pizza Tours, and Chicago Pizza Tours owners at one of the tomato booths, Milwaukee Food Tours also operates a pizza tour which I believe takes place on Saturdays.  Should you find yourself in Milwaukee, GO FOR IT!  As well as a meeting of the Pizza Minds which included Pizza Brain (1st Pizza Museum) and Greg DiNapoli (bottom right), Pizza Quest, John Arena, and many others.

Late night we decided to head to Dom Demarco’s an offspring of DiFara, maybe a second cousin or something of that type.  Pizza Brain, stuffed Scott & I into the back of a convertible and made the 30 mile trip while John Arena took Milwaukee Food Tours in a car that was probably much more comfortable but they probably didn’t listen to the theme song of Never Ending Story!

9:48pm

Of course it was closing but that certainly wasn’t an issue, it was almost as if the owner was expecting us…

Luckily Scott survived the pic on the right, either the owner Al was telling us emphatically about the mixture of cheeses that they use or he was explaining how the location was superb being next door to the 2nd busiest Petsmart in the country.

Below you will see their filtration system for the water that they use as well as their steel pans getting the Sicilian style pizzas ready for the next day’s orders.

And now, the finished product.  It was pretty darn good

Think I am going to end this post around here.  There was a whole other 1/2 day back at the show for me before I flew back to Chicago (nice shout out to the owner of Rosati’s that I spotted on my flight) and by the time I landed I had just enough time to head home, hit the sack and went right into a Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon tour giving schedule while Chicago was over excitedly celebrating St Patrick’s Day!

- If you are on the tour any time soon, ask me about this and I can tell you incredible stories

My hometown pizza, that I use to judge all pizza going forward happens to reside in the town next to my hometown.  I’m talking about Hillside, IL.  Everyone from that area should have a good idea the pie I’m about to start talking about.  None other than Q’s

Above we have Q’s with the landmark status sign on the left, and owner Mike behind the bar on the right.  For me, this place is my measuring stick doing Chicago tavern style pizza at its finest.  You will feel like you stepped into a time machine that brought you back to the 60s when you walk through the door, and I thoroughly enjoy that.  The atmosphere and friendly staff make for an outstanding experience, especially when they drop off these on your table

There’s my measuring sticks, the sausage garlic on the left, and the Italian beef & green pepper on the right (I feel like that is cheating sometimes… getting an Italian beef on your pie).  It would be a given to say that Q’s in Hillside was instrumental in my love / obsession with the world’s most perfect food.  I’m not going to break down the flavors and give you a cheat sheet on what this pie tastes like, I believe the pics can handle it for me.

]]> http://www.chicagopizzatours.com/measuring-stick-pizza/feed 0 http://www.chicagopizzatours.com/happy-birthday-driver-jim http://www.chicagopizzatours.com/happy-birthday-driver-jim#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:34:47 +0000 jon http://www.chicagopizzatours.com/?p=211 Now I am not going to say how old you are… but this is quite a landmark birthday you are celebrating today.  Best from the staff at CPT!

BTW kids, good luck on the math competition at Harvard this Saturday!

I’m not even going to go there. My standard reply is always: “Depends on what I’m in the mood for.” The question I’d rather get is, “Why do you love Chicago pizza so much?” It seems like an obvious question, but it’s one I rarely, if ever, come across.

To answer that question, you must first understand what qualifies as real Chicago pizza—and that isn’t easily explained. But I’ll try to sum up what I’ve learned over the past 34 years. The media typically presents Chicago as a deep-dish city, and, while we certainly boast that we are the originators and the U.S. capital of the deep-dish pizza, the locals, for the most part, only eat deep-dish when friends or relatives visit from out of town. What the majority of us grew up on is Tavern-Style pizza. It’s a thin-crust, circular pizza cut into squares. In a city with thousands of pizzerias, most serve the Tavern-Style, but something has happened in recent years: More and more styles are being done extremely well here, and not just in the downtown area. I’m talking about pizzas out in the neighborhoods, away from the office buildings and hotels, in areas of Chicago that the locals call home.

Over the past decade, pizzerias of varying styles have opened around the classic deep-dish joints, and the best part is that these new styles don’t take away from the classics—they complement them. What do I mean by different styles? Just about any style you can think of: true Neapolitan, Coal Oven, New Haven, New York Street Slice, even a Quad Cities-style pizzeria that recently opened. Did anyone know that the Quad Cities had their own style of pizza? Can you even name the Quad Cities?

I may be wrong, but I believe no other city in the U.S. displays so much loyalty to its classics while simultaneously embracing change. I’ll never take it for granted that I can go out for lunch with friends at a deep-dish joint—I’m talking about those pizzerias with the amazing caramelized crusts due to the overlapping of the cheese (they claim it’s intentional, but common sense suggests otherwise)—and then take my wife and son out for dinner at a wine bar featuring grilled artisan pies.

In fact, that brings me to another question I hear too often: “Do you ever get sick of pizza?” Short answer: “No!” If I ate the same pizza every day, of course I would get sick of it. But, thanks to living in a city like Chicago, I can switch it up so often that it can feel like a completely different meal from restaurant to restaurant and still be labeled on the menu as pizza.

For this very reason, I convinced my wife that I should:

A. Quit my job

B. Buy a bus

C. Build a website

D. Take strangers out for pizza as a career

She thought I was crazy, but in a good way. Once the nitty-gritty paperwork was finished, the response to Chicago Pizza Tours was something I was unprepared for. People were actually Googling “Chicago pizza tour” as if they assumed some corporation had developed this concept decades ago. It was pleasant to discover that a pizzeria tour was something people were actively searching for, a service they assumed had always been available. Customers often ask me, “You’re only going into your second year?”

My guests’ first surprise is that we are still a relatively young company. Their second surprise is to learn that we don’t just visit deep-dish restaurants on our tours. I worried about this at first. But when I explain to our guests what Chicago pizza really is, a light bulb switches on. They understand that they aren’t just eating like a tourist who asks the hotel concierge where to find the best (usually the closest) deep-dish place. They eat like true Chicagoans.

My worries have faded as I’ve led more tours. My guests aren’t just enjoying a variety of pizza styles in different neighborhoods; they’re getting a crash course in what it’s like to live and eat in a city that constantly reinvents its culinary scene. Chicago Pizza Tours guests learn the history of the restaurants, the types of ingredients (including how they were sourced) and the physics of how the pies cook in an oven. I try to help make them educated diners, not mentally checked-out tourists. Patrons take their dining experience to the next level when they understand what goes in to each slice that they consume.

So back to the original question: “Why do I love Chicago pizza?” I love it because there’s a coal-oven joint in West Town, because there’s a “carpet on the wall” thin-crust shop on the south side, because there’s a northern Italian hand-tossed place in Lincoln Square, because there’s a pizza pot pie in Lincoln Park and because there’s a deep-dish joint outside of Millennium Park. I love it because it’s so impossible to define and label exactly what Chicago-Style pizza is…

It makes the Second City’s pizza second to none.