The Chancery in Wauwatosa closed its doors for the final time this past Saturday. Not stand-alone and not quite a chain, the Chancery combined the best aspects of free popcorn, breaded food and non-threatening Caucasian servers for a low-risk, moderate-reward dining experience. For you Office Space fans, think Chotskies except the waiters smoked weed instead of crack.
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In my own life, the Chancery was that first girlfriend of Wisconsin restaurants. It was the place our useless realtor took us on our second day looking for houses back in 2007. I had the chicken bacon ranch wrap, perhaps my first ever experience with grated cheese and meat encased in a wheat flour shell. As our friends would visit my wife and I in our new home and our new state, we had to take them to the Chancery to get the whole Tosa Village experience (back in those days there was no Cafe Hollander, no Cafe Bavaria, no La Reve and Pizzeria Piccola was brand new). Like any junior high relationship, our frequenting of the Chancery dropped dramatically as our budget grew and my free time expanded after the end of residency. Still, with the Chancery being refitted as a Jose's Blue Sombrero, it's the end of a chapter in my social life of food.
Alas, this was not the only cornerstone restaurant that my wife and I lost this past year. Hammer's General Feed Store in Galesburg, Illinois closed in July of 2016. This little gem, referred to by many as the "Maggiano's of Broad Street", had the best restaurant lasagna I've ever tasted and the only salad bar built into a conestoga wagon. With tall plastic cups of cherry coke and fresh cinnamon rolls, Hammer's was my (then) girlfriend's favorite place to go out for dinner on a Saturday night after 6 o'clock mass at Corpus Christi Church. Follow that up with a dorm room viewing of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon or Zero Mostel in the original The Producers courtesy of the Knox College library and you have the basis of my wife's and my seventeen years of love and marriage.
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Hammer's closed after the owners, longing for retirement, could not identify a new owner. If only my life had worked out a little differently I'd carry on this tradition of unique casual dining.
Without Hammer's and the Chancery, I am left with one great bedrock restaurant of my life. Angie's Pizza on 83rd & Pulaski on Chicago's South Side is the restaurant that spans my various stages of life as a fetus, child, teenager and adult. The flat pan pizza is unparalleled in its savory melted cheese, subtly sweet pizza sauce and crunchy crust. I am literally telling you, dear blog reader, that this is the greatest pizza on the planet.
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Although a shocking interior remodeling project took place in 2014 after a flood, Angie's keeps rocking out the world's finest pizza with no signs of stopping. If Angie's were to close, my devastation would compel me to write a country song so sad that listeners would assume that George Jones was back from the dead. But that's never going to happen, because the greatest pizza place on the planet can NEVER close.
In the spirit of the Chancery, Hammer's and Angie's, let's all take a few moments to reflect on those great houses of stone and light that safeguard our individual culinary autobiographies.
Bon appetit!
In my own life, the Chancery was that first girlfriend of Wisconsin restaurants. It was the place our useless realtor took us on our second day looking for houses back in 2007. I had the chicken bacon ranch wrap, perhaps my first ever experience with grated cheese and meat encased in a wheat flour shell. As our friends would visit my wife and I in our new home and our new state, we had to take them to the Chancery to get the whole Tosa Village experience (back in those days there was no Cafe Hollander, no Cafe Bavaria, no La Reve and Pizzeria Piccola was brand new). Like any junior high relationship, our frequenting of the Chancery dropped dramatically as our budget grew and my free time expanded after the end of residency. Still, with the Chancery being refitted as a Jose's Blue Sombrero, it's the end of a chapter in my social life of food.
Alas, this was not the only cornerstone restaurant that my wife and I lost this past year. Hammer's General Feed Store in Galesburg, Illinois closed in July of 2016. This little gem, referred to by many as the "Maggiano's of Broad Street", had the best restaurant lasagna I've ever tasted and the only salad bar built into a conestoga wagon. With tall plastic cups of cherry coke and fresh cinnamon rolls, Hammer's was my (then) girlfriend's favorite place to go out for dinner on a Saturday night after 6 o'clock mass at Corpus Christi Church. Follow that up with a dorm room viewing of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon or Zero Mostel in the original The Producers courtesy of the Knox College library and you have the basis of my wife's and my seventeen years of love and marriage.
Hammer's closed after the owners, longing for retirement, could not identify a new owner. If only my life had worked out a little differently I'd carry on this tradition of unique casual dining.
Without Hammer's and the Chancery, I am left with one great bedrock restaurant of my life. Angie's Pizza on 83rd & Pulaski on Chicago's South Side is the restaurant that spans my various stages of life as a fetus, child, teenager and adult. The flat pan pizza is unparalleled in its savory melted cheese, subtly sweet pizza sauce and crunchy crust. I am literally telling you, dear blog reader, that this is the greatest pizza on the planet.
Although a shocking interior remodeling project took place in 2014 after a flood, Angie's keeps rocking out the world's finest pizza with no signs of stopping. If Angie's were to close, my devastation would compel me to write a country song so sad that listeners would assume that George Jones was back from the dead. But that's never going to happen, because the greatest pizza place on the planet can NEVER close.
In the spirit of the Chancery, Hammer's and Angie's, let's all take a few moments to reflect on those great houses of stone and light that safeguard our individual culinary autobiographies.
Bon appetit!