Istanbul Photos

Istanbul is a bustling city with street vendors everywhere,
people running by with giant loads on their backs,
and seemingly endless markets where you can get lost for days.
It's worth the trip just to visit the famous Spice Bazaar.
I feel lucky to have made it there in my life. Enjoy.

Fresh Chiles at the Spice Bazaar


This guy would scurry into a crowd, set up his stand and sell half his stack in about two minutes.



Persimmons



Haggling at the Spice Bazaar



Where the Spice Bazaar gets its name.



Doner vendor



Gotta love a market where you see offal just glistening in the sun!


In Italian, corn is referred to as Granturco, or "Turkish Grain", because it was first introduced to the Italians via Turkish trade routes. Istanbul was and still is a world crossroads, serving as a gateway between Asia and Europe.

Cheap Stuff that Works Vol.3--Kyocera Ceramic Peeler

I had reservations about including this awesome new gizmo (I got one for Christmas) in my "Cheap Stuff" series, because with its nearly eighteen-dollar price tag it's really not cheap at all.

But it works. Holy smokes, does this thing work.

It's as if, before you picked it up, you had never actually used a peeler. Never even heard of one. It's like all the other so-called peelers you've been using were constructed out of old Diet Coke cans or rusty license plates.

I've been reading and wondering about ceramic blades for a long time, but I've never tried one. Basically, they're made out of a special type of ceramic which is like the hardest surface known to man, second only to diamonds. The upside of this is that they become and remain really sharp. The downside is that they're nearly impossible to sharpen yourself (you have to send them in to the company to sharpen), and they can shatter if dropped or used for more challenging tasks like cutting through bones or smashing garlic cloves.

Due to the negatives, the fact that I love my carbon steel Sabatiers, and the fairly prohibitive price tag on some of the more decent brands of ceramic knives, I'd never gotten one. But someone laid this sweet little Kyocera ceramic peeler on me for Christmas (thanks, Mom--sorry about how I ripped into the mango splitter you gave me a few Christmases ago!) and it's really a perfect way to kind of try out the whole ceramic blade thing without having to spend eighty or a hundred bucks on a new knife (which I don't even need--I have too many knives already).

(Wow! Just now while I was googling 'Kyocera' so I could provide the link above, I discovered that they make a ceramic-bladed mandoline that looks to be almost as affordable as the trusty old Benriner. I so don't need to buy that. But I want it. And it's available in my choice of four high-fashion colors....and I have a responsibility to the readers of this blog. Must. Stay. Strong. Must. Not. Shop. Online....)

Anyway, it's probably pretty clear by now that I love this new handy-dandy peeler. The blade is freakishly sharp. It glides effortlessly across the surface of normal stuff like carrots, parsnips, and potatoes, but it also does a pretty damn good job peeling thick, tough stuff like butternut squash that you'd normally resort to using a knife on. And due to the fact that the blade is so mind-blowingly sharp, it really shines when peeling delicate stuff like tomatoes, ripe pears, and grapes.

Ok, that was just a test to see if you're paying attention. I didn't use my new best friend the cool red peeler to peel a grape. But this thing could probably do it if you really decided you wanted to. In fact, if I had any grapes in my fridge, I'd go peel one right now, just to say I did. But I don't.

The coolest thing about this peeler, though, is that the blade rotates 180 degrees. So righties and lefties can use it the normal, vertically-oriented way, and you can also rotate it only 90 degrees and use it like a Y-peeler. It slices! It peels grapes! It can remove unsightly body hair! It's three, three, three peelers in one!

(As a ridiculously off-topic aside, has anyone besides me laughed their ass off at those Sham-Wow commercials that have been airing recently? The guy who does those commercials has this hilarious, strangely dark, self-parodic way of delivering the classic Ron Popeil-style, in-your-face, as-seen-on-tv ad schtick. Seriously, mark this guy down. He's one to watch.)

Oh, one caveat. This peeler has a single-sided blade, meaning that it can only cut in one direction. Most peelers, since they lack the rotating head, have a double-sided blade allowing for either right-handed or left-handed use. An added benefit of the double-sided blade is that you can peel in both directions--ie, on the downstroke and then back on the upstroke. I don't peel this way, but for those of you who this is important, this may not be the peeler for you.

Anyway, since it really is like three tools in one, due to the rotating head, and since good quality peelers already go for eleven or twelve bucks these days, I'm urging everyone to ditch the habit of buying that ubiquitous metal piece-o'-crap that you buy in the grocery store that gets dull so fast that you probably have three of them rattling around your utensil drawer. Just stop.

Cheap tools end up costing more in money and headaches over the long run. Spend the extra eight or ten bucks, emerge from the Stone Age, and step into the high-tech, 21st century world of vegetable preparation.

Classic Cookbook Review--French Country Cooking

Elizabeth David emerged as a writer of articles about cooking in post-war England in the late 1940's. Her first full-length book, Mediterranean Food was released in 1950, and followed up almost immediately with French Country Cooking in 1951.

It's hard to imagine in today's 3G-fiber-optic-paced world, but if you really think about what life was like in early 1950's post-war England, David's books must have seemed like a welcome breath of warm, sunny, Mediterranean air. Food was still being rationed then, and a huge number of what we now consider to be staples (eggplant and olive oil, for instance) were either unobtainable or unfamiliar to the average British cook. English cooking was largely very drab and bland, with a lot of roasts, flour-thickened sauces, and overcooked mushy vegetables.

David's food writing was borne out of her travels, both before and during the war. She studied at the Sorbonne in Paris as a young woman and left England in 1939 to become an actress. When WWII started in Europe, she ended up fleeing from one exotic locale to the next, spending time in Antibes, Corsica, Italy, the Greek island of Syros, Egypt, and India.

By the time the war ended and she returned to England, she had seen (and eaten) all over the world. She had cultivated a strong appreciation for the food of the Mediterranean, and this is what she chose to write about. In a time where staples like milk, butter, and beef were in short supply, David was writing about exotics like saffron, eel, capers, and fennel; ingredients that most Brits had never even heard of. For many, cooped up for years due to the war, these books must've read like escapist fantasy.

The books, of course, were hugely successful, and David went on to write ten or so, mostly focused on the food of provincial France and Italy (although her book English Bread and Yeast Cookery is also a classic).

I found this book for three bucks at a used bookstore when I was a budding young cook attending culinary school, thrilled at the prospect of steeping myself in classics like daube de boeuf and truite meunière. It appealed to me as a nice introduction to French country cooking, and I had heard of David and knew that she was considered a legendary cookbook author. This was an ambitious time for me and I had visions of attempting to cook my way through this book in my spare time.

I don't think I quite managed it. When I took the book down off of my bookshelf, a blue fingertip band-aid fell out from where it had been serving as a page-marker for the last 15 years or so. That should tell you something about my knife-skills at the time, and, since it was wedged in only about a third of the way through the fish chapter, you can also figure out about how successful I was at cooking my way through the book.

The recipes here are solid, and do manage to give a pretty comprehensive assortment of "country" or "peasant-style" dishes from the varied regions of France. But what makes this book really wonderful is what it represents, and that's a cultural shift that was, at the time, on the horizon in post-war England. I'm going to quote extensively here from David's introduction, because I really think it manages to capture and convey the ideas that are at the very heart of this classic.

Although there is not such a profusion of raw materials in England, we still have much greater gastronomic resources than the national cookery would lead one to suppose.

Rationing, the disappearance of servants, and the bad and expensive meals served at restaurants, have led Englishwomen to take a far greater interest in food than was formerly considered polite; and large numbers of people with small farms in the country produce their own home-cured bacon, ham and sausages; personal supervision of the kitchen garden induces a less indifferent attitude to the fate of spring vegetables; those who have churned their own butter, fed their chickens and geese, cherished their fruit trees, skinned and cleaned their own hares, are in no mood to see their effort wasted. Town dwellers, who take trouble over their marketing, chose their meat and fish carefully and keep a good store cupboard, are equally interested in seeing that their care is repaid in good and interesting meals.

It is for such people that I have collected the recipes in this book, most of which derive from French regional and peasant cookery, which, at its best, is the most delicious in the world; cookery which uses raw materials to the greatest advantage without going to the absurd lengths of the complicated and so-called Haute Cuisine.... Good cooking is honest, sincere and simple, and by this I do not mean to imply that you will find in this, or indeed any other book, the secret of turning out first-class food in a few minutes with no trouble. Good food is always a trouble and its preparation should be regarded as a labour of love, and this book is intended for those who actually and positively enjoy the labour involved in entertaining their friends and providing their families with first-class food.

There's so much here to take in. David touches on almost every one of today's major food trends, fads, and cultural shifts--organics, local eating, head-to-tail eating, the emergence of 'foodie' culture, garden-to-table eating, the increase in popularity of urban farmer's markets, seasonality. Somehow I'm surprised there's not a chapter on savory cupcakes or any mention of espuma.

David somehow had the prescience to begin constructing a school of thought that was rejecting the concepts of processed, factory-produced, value-added, canned, frozen, and artificially-preserved food just as this nascent industry was emerging. The post WWII era was typified by a massive industrial change-over. Factories that had geared up to produce goods for the war effort were forced to reconfigure, and began to make cans and canned goods, frozen and processed foods, and nitrogen fertilizers for agriculture. Simultaneously, the exploding advertising industry was employed to create newer and ever-increasing markets for these new products.

This, in large part, is how we got where we are today, with a huge portion of our society not knowing how to cook or even take apart raw ingredients--think about it, how many people do you know that are comfortable cutting up a chicken? Ads convinced cooks that canned or frozen vegetables were superior to fresh ones, that eating any fruit at any time of year is a God-given right, and that cooking was a "chore" or "drudgery"--something to be avoided at all costs, or, at least, something to try and spend as little time and energy as possible doing.

Subsequent food industry "innovations" along with PR and ad campaigns have brought about the boneless/skinless phenomenon, the hormoneing and antibiotic-ization of all meat-providing animals, the de-fatting of industrially-raised pork and eggs, the ubiquitous use of high-fructose corn syrup, and scores of other Really Bad Ideas that were driven by the food and agriculture industries' desire to make more and more money without any concern for the quality of the products, the effects their actions would have on the health of the people eating the products or the environment in which they were produced, or for the implicit and explicit messages being sent to our society about the value and importance we place on feeding our stomachs and our souls day in and day out, throughout the lives of multiple generations of people.

We're learning now, of course. Many of the ideas David espoused back in the early 50's are now becoming fashionable among foodies and then beginning to wind their way into the popular culture. But we still have a ways to go, and it's an uphill climb because these concepts are working against food-industry ideals that have been firmly entrenched for the last 40+ years and that have huge money and lobbying power with which to push back.

All this could've been avoided if we'd have all read our Elizabeth David, and tried to emulate her and her wonderful celebratory attitude towards food and cooking. David, of course, was mostly unaware of all the political stuff, and was just concerned with eating and living well. Which is, if you think about it, the very heart of the matter, from a personal, political, and societal standpoint. Cooking and eating (along with writing about it) is a political act--regardless of whether one is aware of it.

Finishing with Butter

Butter is the perennial MVP of food and cooking. One mention of it and everyone rolls their eyes skyward and makes their best food orgasm face. But how do most home cooks use butter?

Restaurants use butter in a lot of ways where it's not all that evident. Fish and meats are basted in sizzling butter while they're cooking, delicate proteins like lobster are poached in it, compound butters are allowed to melt over meat while it rests, and beurre monté is used all over the place.

In Thomas Keller's 1999 classic, The French Laundry Cookbook, there's a piece about beurre monté:

At the French Laundry, we use an awful lot of butter without actually serving a lot of butter, because of our reliance on the substance called beurre monté. We cook in it, rest meats in it, make sauces with it. It's an extraordinary vehicle for both heat and flavor. Butter in its solid state is an emulsification of butter fat, milk solids, and water. If you melt butter, these three components separate, but beurre monté--a few drops of water and chunks of butter whisked over moderate heat--is a method of melting butter while maintaining the emulsification.

That's the trick. Melting the butter without allowing it to separate.

And that's why most home cooks don't make butter sauces or use butter to it's full effect.

Which is a shame. Because it's not difficult to do what Keller talks about on a much smaller, much simpler scale.

But why? Is getting more butter or fat into what we cook some kind of lofty goal? No, of course not. But making the food that we cook taste better is. And that's what butter--when used properly--does.

"Fat equals flavor" is an often-uttered foodie catchphrase, but it's inaccurate. Fat, on its own, has very little flavor at all. Taste a neutral oil like canola or safflower and see for yourself--it's all fat, but there's no flavor there at all.

A more precise turn of phrase would be "fat carries flavor". Sure, it adds it's own qualities--the flavor notes present in the type of fat you choose, the richness that the fat brings to the equation--but what it mostly does is allow whatever flavors are already present in the dish to linger longer on the tongue and the taste buds. The fat coats the tongue and the interior of the mouth, causing the food being eaten to be tasted longer, which results in a perception of more flavor.

So, fat carries flavor, amplifies it. And butter does so even more than just about any type of fat due to the fact that it's already in a state of emulsification, as Keller explains in the quote above. Butter, in its emulsified liquid state, has a lush, creamy mouth feel that serves to call attention to everything else in its presence, beyond adding the actual flavor of the butter itself. Melted or clarified butter, by contrast, carries the flavor of butter, but it doesn't bring that creamy, unctuous texture to the party.

So that's the justification for using butter in certain situations where you might not otherwise think to use it. Now, I'm not saying that you should drown whatever you're cooking in butter; it's not necessary to do so to take advantage of butter's unique flavor-enhancing qualities. A little goes a long way.

And it's also not necessary to learn how to make butter sauces, although it's not like they're all that difficult to make. But they can be finicky and a bit tricky to hold--too much heat and they separate, if they get too cold, they'll coagulate and then separate. Using a coffee thermos to hold them is an easy work-around, but the famously delicate nature of butter sauces is why most people are intimidated and therefore don't bother to try making a butter sauce at home.

I make'em once in a while, but what I do more often is finish with butter. It's basically the same thing as making a butter sauce, but you're just utilizing whatever liquid happens to be in the dish rather than using a separate pan to make your sauce. And all that's required is to simply leave whatever you're cooking a little looser or more saucy than you normally would, and then toss in a few pieces of cut-up whole butter after you pull the pan off the heat.

Now, to be clear, this is not the same as using beurre monté, referenced above. Finishing with butter is referred to in French as monter au beurre--mounting with butter--something I've found to be much more useful and accessible to do on a regular basis in my home kitchen.

Try it the next time you make a pasta dish. I almost never make a "sauce" when we eat pasta at our house. I just make the sauce in the pan as I'm tossing everything together. Once you've cooked your veggies--say mushrooms, peppers, onion, and garlic--just deglaze the pan with white wine, reduce the wine by about half, add a bit of the pasta-cooking water, and your cooked pasta. Toss everything together, get it nice and hot, pull the pan off the heat, and then add your cut-up butter and some grated cheese.

This sounds easy enough, but as you toss the ingredients around and the butter pats melt into the mix, you are, in fact, making a beurre blanc. It's just that you're not even conscious of it. But as you toss, the whole butter is transforming itself into that warm, liquidy-yet-emulsified substance that merited an entire page of the FLC. It's combining with the liquids already present in the dish and causing the sauce to tighten. This is exactly the same as making a separate sauce in another pan and then adding it to the pasta dish, except way easier.

You can do this with just about every dish where there's liquid present. It's easier to manage when there's some wine or citrus juice in your liquid, since slightly acidic liquids assist in keeping the butter in a state of emulsion. The acidity also serves as a flavor-enhancer and a nice foil for the richness of the butter. Butter and lemon have a natural affinity. They perfectly compliment each other in a Zen-like yin/yang kind of way.

As an example, last night I made some pork loin chops. I seared the chops in a saute pan and then finished them in the oven. After I removed the pork from the pan I browned them in, I deglazed with white wine, added a bit of mustard, a touch of apple cider vinegar, some chopped fresh sage leaves,and a little water. After allowing that to cook together for a bit, I tossed in some cut-up butter, off the heat. Just a few jiggles of the pan so as to prevent the butter from melting and separating yielded a gorgeous pale brown pan sauce that took less time than it took the pork chops to finish cooking in the oven.

This is the same way that pan sauces for dishes like veal or chicken alla Piccata or Marsala are made. They're classics, not because restaurants perfected them, but because they are quick and easy, make use of the flavorful bits stuck onto the pan after cooking the meat, and don't involve dirtying another pan to make. Many restaurants kind of reverse-engineer the process, in fact, so as not to require making pan sauce over and over again all night long. They'll make one large batch prior to service, and then simply cook the meat, plate and sauce it, which is easier when you're making thirty-five orders over a span of three hours, but much more difficult when you're making dinner for your family or guests. And, to be honest, the restaurant versions are a bit lacking, since the sauce doesn't incorporate the cooking juices or fond from the pan. The end result is sauce over meat, rather than the more unified dish that comes from the one-pan approach.

So, sure....we love butter. Hooray for butter! But it's helpful to understand why butter is so universally revered and how to more easily and more effectively make use of it on a day-to-day basis.

(And don't even get me started talking about brown butter. That's a whole 'nother entry.)

Pizza at Burt's Place

So I finally made the 15 minute drive over to Burt's Place to try the much-talked about pizza.

This place is quite the experience. It's been written up in Saveur and TimeOut Chicago, but both of those articles are really more about the pizza, and Burt's personal landmark status in the Chicago pan pizza universe (he founded Inferno in Evanston, Gulliver's in Rogers Park, and Pequods in Morton Grove). These pieces don't go into much detail, however, about the overall experience, so I'm glad I read the thread (linked above) on LTH Forum and was prepared for all the "quirks" of this place.

Some have commented that Burt's is the pizza equivalent to Seinfeld's "soup nazi". I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it might be fair to compare Burt's recommended protocols to those of Kenny Shopsin. The main thing is that you need to call and order your pizza ahead of time. Which, if you know about it, isn't really anything all that difficult. But Burt can complicate things--he's known to take the phone off the hook when things get hectic, there's no website to consult before ordering, and during busier times, he'll invoke the "nothing but pizza" rule.

This kind of thing can be off-putting to those who are caught off guard, especially in our current "customer is always right" universe, but I've been reading about this place for years so I thoroughly briefed the longtime friend I went with and ordered our large sausage, mushroom, and fresh garlic pizza well ahead of time.

I ordered our pizza to be ready at 7pm and, when I walked through the door at the stroke of seven, the small dining room--which resembles kind of a run-down northwoods lodge (or maybe your crazy old uncle's basement decorated in the 60's to look like a run-down northwoods lodge)--was nearly empty. "What's the big deal," I wondered, "guess I didn't need to order ahead of time after all." There weren't any employees in sight and I wondered if I should go ahead and seat myself while I waited for my friend to arrive.

But, like a flash, the host/waiter/busboy (fellow LTH'er Buddy Roadhouse) greeted me, asked me if I'd ordered ahead (gave a look of relief when I said 'yes'), and asked if I was eating in or taking it to go. When I said we were eating in, he recognized my order and name, and quickly guided me to a pre-set corner booth all set up with water and menus.

I called my friend to see where he was, and he was just turning down Ferris, so he would just need to park the car. Buddy emerged and asked if we were ready for the pizza. (They do not play around at this place. If you order your pizza for seven, it's ready precisely at seven.) I indicated that my friend was just parking the car, so, sure, go ahead and bring it out. My friend arrived, we ordered a pitcher of beer, and the pizza was served up promptly and courteously.

As we were eating, the place filled up some (but not totally--they use the large center table as kind of a serving area, where Buddy keeps the pizza pans, water pitchers, and such) and we watched as group after group coming through the front door were told either that they'd have to wait one and a half to two hours, or that it wasn't possible for them to get pizza tonight at all.

My friend was simultaneously incredulous and thrilled by this. He couldn't believe it. "What kind of place is this? Who does that?", he asked. "I tried to tell you," I replied. But we both enjoyed the feeling of being 'in the know' and eating this pizza that was apparently so in demand that others were not able to purchase it--at any price.

We chatted a bit with Buddy about the whole calling in ahead thing and he came across as pretty defensive, which, if you read the thread on LTH, is pretty understandable. Much has been made of this policy and there are about as many critics and annoyed would-be customers as there are fans. "We heard about the rules, so we knew to call in the order," I said.

"They're not rules," Buddy replied, a bit of exasperation becoming evident, "we're just trying to make sure that you have the best experience possible. There's just only so much pizza we can make--Burt only makes so much dough every night, the kitchen is tiny. So this is the only way we can make sure that the customers are happy. We're doing this for you!"

I didn't press it with him. It seemed a touchy subject and I was just happy to be eating the fine pizza and drinking cold beer that came complete with frosted glasses.

Don't get me wrong. Buddy wasn't gruff or inhospitable. Not at all. In fact, I found him to be extremely welcoming and pleasant. His service came with a bit of a flourish, in fact; the kind that often comes at fine dining establishments, only his was done in kind of a tongue-in-cheek way that I found simultaneously charming, funny, and real. This guy has worked for Burt at various places for some thirty years, and it's clear that he understands the pitfalls that lay between (increasingly entitled and demanding) customers and Burt's stringent pan pizza wizardry.

Ok....so how was the pizza?

Very good. Excellent, even. My expectations were very high. I was expecting to pronounce this the best pan pizza in the Chicago area, and I've been eating the landmark pizzas at Malnati's, Gino's East, and Uno/Due for my entire life.

Burt's is a similar, but different pizza than those. It's noticeably lighter and easier to eat than those aforementioned gut-bombs. I'm a big eater, but I have trouble eating more than two large slices from the epic Chicago pizza institutions. At Burt's, though , I was easily able to eat half a large pizza (four slices) and would've had more, if my friend and I hadn't polished off the whole thing.

The standout elements, for me, at least in this initial visit, were the sauce and the sausage. I'm not one that usually even notices the sauce on a pizza, but this sauce was truly excellent. Very sweet, with great fresh tomato flavor, and a vivid bright red color. It was less pasty than most pizza sauces as well, resulting in a more well-lubricated finished product.

The sausage, also, stood out, more for what it wasn't than for what it was. It was a truly tasty, high-quality sausage with lots of great garlic and fennel flavor, but what struck me about it was the restraint in its application. It was applied with a light hand. The standard-bearers of Chicago pan use what I call the "manhole cover" method of sausage application. By that, I mean that the entire pizza is completely covered with sausage. This is sometimes referred to as "the sausage patty". It's good, but I only really enjoy it for about five bites, then it becomes overwhelming, heavy and leaden. By the end of your second slice, you're thinking "ugh...get this pizza away from me". In my family, a work-around we've come up with for this is to order one sausage and one only cheese (or cheese and veggies) pizza, and then kind of alternate eating them, to achieve a better balance.

Burt's solves this problem by giving large (2-3 bites) chunks of sausage, but spacing them out pretty well so that they don't overwhelm. I found it to be the perfect amount of sausage. Less is sometimes more.

Now. I'm a crust guy. I'm usually not all about the toppings. Honestly, unless they're offensively bad or stand-out good, I don't really notice them all that much. I go back to places for their particular style of crust.

Burt's reputation focuses on the crust, which is why my expectations were so high. Burt is known for pioneering the "caramelized cheese" crust technique, where a liberal amount of cheese is applied under the pizza, along the outer rim of the pan, resulting in a crunchy burnt cheese layer that kind of bonds with the crust.

On this front, I was disappointed. Our pizza was almost devoid of the burnt cheese endcap, and the dough was just ok. It was fluffier and lighter than the usual pan pizza crust, and had a much more bread-like feel to it, almost like a focaccia dough. I was expecting something much closer to the flatter, crunchier 'short-dough' consistency found on most pan pizza. Also, the crust on our pizza wasn't particularly crunchy. It wasn't soggy or anything, but I like a good strong crunch and crispness to my pizza.

But, I'm willing to go back and try again. I have read that the larger sizes (we ordered a 14") don't get as crunchy so they should be ordered well done. I'll probably just order two smaller pizzas next time, as that will give us more of an opportunity to try the great toppings. And, as with any craft-produced product, each one is a bit different, the maker sometimes has an off night, ovens run funny sometimes, etc, etc. The toppings were so exceptional that I will gladly make a bit of an effort to figure out how to get the crust the way I like it.

Leeway extended.

As far as some of the more extraneous details, I feel compelled to address the overall look and feel of the place. Some have commented that the place is "dirty" and my famously finicky mom, who my dad dragged there a few months ago, has, with a wrinkle of her nose, pronounced Burt's to be "filthy". When pressed about what, specifically, is so dirty, she cites dust on the antique radios and assorted tschochkes scattered around the room. Hmmm.... As far as I'm concerned, since I'm not eating off the dusty old radios, who cares? How's the pizza?

But to address these points, I didn't find it to appear dirty, but Burt's dining room does have an older, "well worn" feel to it. It's homey. The decor looks to be based around mid-century Stuff Burt Likes. There's an ancient stereo over in one corner occupying space where a table could be, and it's playing old jazz or classical music. The lighting is very dim (and, honestly, the radios are all kept way up on high shelves, so I have no idea how my mom could've even seen if they were dusty) and there's a kind of feeling that this is a restaurant that time forgot. It feels like it's been there forever.

I can see how people might interpret that as "dirty" or whatever, especially given the current corporate standardized restaurant decor model that we all have become so familiar with, but all that's required is a bit of a paradigm shift to overcome this. Think of it not as a restaurant, but as an extension of Burt and (his wife) Sharon's home. Hence the name.

Burt is 71 years old and has pledged to keep making pizzas until he's dead. He's been doing this forever and has done it in larger and more profit-minded restaurants, and now he's doing it in a tiny little place on a strangely deserted-feeling little side street off Dempster in Morton Grove. I get the feeling that he's not doing it for the money, the reputation, or the word of mouth. I think he's doing it because he likes making great pizza. So he's doing it his way. My sense is that he's of the mind that if you don't like how he does it, he'd be happy to have you go to Malnatis, Giordano's, or wherever, and would direct you there without hesitation.

I happen to like how Burt does it, and am kicking myself for not having tried this little gem of a place years ago. It's close to where I live so I feel lucky to be able to avail myself of Burt's pan pizza for takeout orders on the nights that we don't feel like enjoying the quirky yet welcoming service in their small homey dining room.

Especially since I now understand "the rules".