Beyond Hot Dogs & Deep Dish: A Compendium Of Chicago Food

Carolyn Sweet, left, Stephanie Gannon, center, and Erik Luna, check cellular phone photographs of their food at Hot Doug’s hotdog stand Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014, in Chicago.
Carolyn Sweet, left, Stephanie Gannon, center, and Erik Luna, check cellular phone photographs of their food at Hot Doug's hotdog stand Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014, in Chicago. AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
Carolyn Sweet, left, Stephanie Gannon, center, and Erik Luna, check cellular phone photographs of their food at Hot Doug’s hotdog stand Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014, in Chicago.
Carolyn Sweet, left, Stephanie Gannon, center, and Erik Luna, check cellular phone photographs of their food at Hot Doug's hotdog stand Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014, in Chicago. AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Beyond Hot Dogs & Deep Dish: A Compendium Of Chicago Food

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In popular culture, Chicago’s culinary delights and food history often get boiled down to deep dish pizza, Italian beef and our seven-topping hot dog, but the city has always been a food mecca with nationally noteworthy restaurants, hidden hometown gems and food companies serving a neighborhood clientele (think Margie’s Candies) to the entire world (think the William J. Wrigley Company). A hefty new tome from the University of Illinois Press seeks to take a survey of Chicago’s foodways and culinary history from its earliest days to the present. The Chicago Food Encyclopedia includes entries on everything from the now-defunct supermarket chain Dominick’s Finer Foods to Ovaltine to Otto Schnering, the so-called “U.S. Candy Bar King.” Morning Shift talks with Carol Mighton Haddix and Colleen Taylor Sen, two food journalists who are co-editors of the encyclopedia.