derasso replied to your photo: I don’t think I’m depressed, but I am buying a LOT…
What IS IT with you and the deep dish?
Sometimes I am filled with pride at the fact that I am a member of a species that realized that perfection — i.e., thin, flat, cheesy/tomato-y pizza — could actually be improved upon by preparing it on a thick, cornmeal-based crust, inverting the placement of the cheese and tomato sauce, which preserves the flavor but keeps the cheese deliciously gooey. That humans decided to try taking something that requires no improvement, and innovating a way to make it better, gives me faith in humanity.
Plus, those aren’t just any deep dish pizzas. Those are Gino’s East pizzas, which magically — magically, as if delivered by elves! — appeared on the shelves of a supermarket not a quarter mile from my house in Texas. That is unprecedented! They have a very deep and real significance in my family.
True story: when I was a boy, my parents relocated from the Northwest Indiana suburbs of Chicago to Florida after my dad was laid off, because my grandfather and uncle lived there. We were not abjectly poor, but our shoes came from Payless and we heavily utilized the dollar menu. What I would suspect would be called lower-middle class, though I’ve always been unclear exactly what those terms really mean.
In any case, the primary luxury product of my childhood is that, when times were relatively flush, we would occasionally have Gino’s East pizzas shipped to Florida, and later Nebraska, and Texas, and store them in the freezer. When my parents moved to Indianapolis a few years ago, they made special trips up to Chicago several times a year — just to buy pizzas to take back home. My mom, once, while visiting Chicago, had a Gino’s East pizza delivered, and described the experience as the height of luxury.
It wasn’t having a pizza delivered — it was having this pizza delivered.
Oh, I dabbled in other pizzas, in my time. When I moved back to Chicago years ago, I tried Giordano’s (severely overrated) and Lou Malnati’s (really, just about every bit as good, if I’m honest) — but Gino’s East pizza holds a special, and unique, place in my heart. It is everything that people who talk about branding as a way to establish an emotional connection between a consumer and a product have ever dreamed of.
And the fact that, suddenly, six weeks ago, I could ride my bike to a supermarket in Austin and walk out with a frozen Gino’s East pizza — not as good as the real thing, no, but a huge step up even from the best deep dish pizza available in Texas — it was like a miracle. I buy two or three every time I go to the store (Central Market, if you’re someone on the Internet who has googled “gino’s east pizza austin”) because I am paranoid that, as quickly as they entered my life, they could exit it. My freezer is full of pizza, and it makes me feel like I am home.
