Lincoln Park

Let Us Now Praise Lincoln Park

Photo: Brandon Cirillo via Flickr

Lincoln Park has some fine culinary establishments on the high end, but we have to admit it’s one of the last parts of town we think to go to just poke around for something new and different to try. (We think we put it this way on Chowhound many years ago: “Lincoln Park has one of everything, but it doesn’t have the best of anything.”) So we were struck by the coincidence of two pieces today praising what’s to be found there— one, in the Tribune, paying tribute to a one of a kind place that’s been around forever, the other, at the site Guys Drinking Beer, seriously making the case that Lincoln Avenue (including, but not limited to, Lincoln Park) is where the thinkin’ go for drinkin’.

In the Tribune, Jennifer Day visits a place that ranks up there with R.J. Grunt’s as one of the time capsules of Lincoln Park’s heyday as the proto-yuppie neighborhood in the 1970s: Chicago Pizza & Oven Grinder Co., in an historic building opposite the site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The bizarre pot-pie-style pizza, tellingly sold by the half pound or pound, still draws enough fans to form lines at night:

To a skeptic, the pizza pot pie might resemble a bread bowl filled with spaghetti sauce and a raft of melted cheese. But an informal survey on a recent Friday night found that loyal pizza pot pie fans believe it to be something transcendent. The most common word used to describe the pot pies was “awesome.”


Guys Drinking Beer
acknowledge that “the best street for quantity drinking is Clark Street between Belmont and Irving, notably all those magnificent macro-pourers that live and die by Cubs home games,” but go on to make their case that there’s no better stretch for quality drinking than the couple of miles of Lincoln Avenue that start in Lincoln Park with Bricks (noted for its annual Sierra Nevada Celebration vertical) and goes on to include such spots as Barrelhouse Flat, Delilah’s, the glorious dive Rose’s Lounge, Lincoln Tap Room, Half Acre and finally concludes in Lincoln Square with Huettenbar. It’s a great list to keep in your backpocket on your iPhone for when you’re in the area. “If you can think of a better street than Lincoln Avenue on which to imbibe with care, precision and quality, tell us. We don’t think you will, though,” they conclude.

Let Us Now Praise Lincoln Park