Chicago is known for its deep-dish pizza. It is one of our city-defining foods, and for good reason. My first slice… Wait a second. Can something that thick and rich be called a “slice” of anything? As I was starting to recount, I was fifteen years old when I had eaten my first slab of deep-dish pizza while on a trip to Chicago with my church’s youth group. I have heard a whole pizza referred to as a “pie”, but that noun had never seemed quite right before I had that deep-dish. When I think of a proper pie, I think of something with depth and breadth, something that needs a whole window sill on which to cool after coming out of the oven. Referring to one of the flat, salty, big-circumference pizzas I had grown up with in mid-Michigan (which are also so very delicious) as a “pie” wouldn’t have made sense then. By contrast, a piece of deep-dish looks and eats thickly like a slice of pie.
There’s the mealy crust, the tangy tomato sauce, a blanket of melted mozzarella, and other ingredients like a sausage patty, pepperoni piled high, green peppers, onions… It’s almost too much not be eating one as I type this before dinner. My very first slice was at Pizzeria Due (the second location of iconic Pizzeria Uno), and my appetite at fifteen couldn’t get enough. Those were the years when I could eat a super-sized meal deal from McDonald’s or any other fast food chain, half a bag of Doritos, and a handful of M&Ms at a friend’s house and still have room for dinner later, which I would finish. When I moved to Chicago permanently thirteen years later, I realized that I had basically the rest of my adulthood to embark on sampling an entire culinary world of deliciousness. This included a proper reintroduction to deep-dish pizza which I found to be just as amazing from Giordano’s (in the background, below) as from Pizzerias Uno and Due.
Rewinding to maybe five or six years ago and while being visited by friends from Michigan, we decided on Giordano’s for dinner since everyone seemed in the mood for pizza and also since that particular location was not far from their hotel. One’s ability to put away food can change from one’s twenties to one’s forties. As my friends and I all calculated how much to order, with a near-even split between men and women in our party, I figured I could eat, oh, two slices. Cutting to the chase, we collectively ended up ordering way too much food. It was a good thing their hotel was nearby so we could drop off and refrigerate all of that amazing, leftover Giordano’s deep-dish pizza. It was great, though. The taste was everything I / we wanted. It’s just that there was a lot of it. How much of it could just one of us handle in one sitting?
I loved that this big, beautiful ’75 Caprice Classic convertible was passing a Giordano’s outpost when I happened to spot it. These frames combine so many things I love: a classic GM car from the decade in which I was born, two iconic Chicago restaurants (including Rosebud), beautiful, old architecture, and tony, fabled Rush Street. It also occurred to me that this triple-white Caprice might be the deep-dish experience of convertibles. Let’s look at its standard ingredients: a 400 cubic inch V8 with 175 horsepower; three-speed automatic transmission; 222.7 inches of length draped over a 121.5″ wheelbase; 79.5″ of width; and no less than 4,300 pounds of curb weight to start. A new 2025 Chevy Tahoe is about a foot shorter from end to end, and an inch narrower. (It also weighs about 1,200 pounds more, but most modern vehicles weigh significantly more based on all the equipment they now feature.)
With a starting price of $5,113, just $38 more than the Caprice Classic Landau coupe, it was the most expensive, non-wagon, full-size Chevrolet for sale that year. I love it for existing, and yes, it looks delicious. The question, though, is: What one person back in 1975 would need all of this Caprice convertible and could also digest it all properly? By then, people weren’t buying convertibles to take their families and Fido out for Sunday drives, as everyone was suddenly paranoid about what happens if your vehicle randomly rolls over. No, friend – cars like this were statement makers, meant to be enjoyed primarily by one or maybe two people, and just over 8,300 people chose to make that statement with the very last year of full-sized Chevrolet convertible ever produced. There’s plenty of reading available here at CC about how the Chevy B-Body successfully went on a diet for ’77, but what I really feel like this weekend is one more go at discovering where my threshold for deep-dish pizza has settled in my middle age.
Streeterville, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, September 15, 2024.
The sales brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.
I have to hand it to GM for sticking with the convertible when doing the planning for this generation of cars. And for sticking with it through almost the entire run (do I recall correctly that it was gone from the lineup in 1976?). Chrysler dropped its big droptop just a couple of years into the run of fuselage models, and Ford did not carry it into the new 1973 cars.
I can recall knowing only one person who bought a new convertible in the 1970’s. The librarian at my high school was a younger guy who dressed very stylishly. Knowing what I know now about the probable pay of a high school librarian in the 70’s, he probably had (or married) family money because he had a baby blue 74 or 75 Buick LeSabre convertible with a white top. I wasn’t a GM guy in those years, but I admitted that the Buick was a looker.
I’ve not had the opportunity to experience Chicago style pizza, but I’ve always preferred the thick crust, “pie” type; Joe you’re really making me salivate with your descriptions!!! Generally, I don’t care for humongous wheels clad in rubber bands on classic cars, but for some reason, I have to admit that the combo looks good on this Caprice! Personally, I’ve always been a fan of mag wheels with white walls to provide a unique look; this plus sized beauty and the wheels are a visual delight!
Despite not being a fan of white, it works on this Caprice. Plus, this Caprice would be an ideal way to tour Chicago, as the absence of a roof would better immerse one into the moment by allowing a person to experience the smells, sounds, and unblocked views. Just stick to city streets; skip others, like Lake Shore Drive.
You have me wondering if I’ve ever eaten pizza in Chicago. I think not. What I do remember was staying at The Palmer House my first time in Chicago and eating at the hotel restaurant (or one very close) – very nice, and quite expensive for the time. They offered lobster on your salad, so I knew that was quite the eating joint.
I’m not sure what those 8300 customers were going to do with their Caprice convertibles in 1975, but it seems that at least this one is living its best life. A perfect car for gliding to the pizza place, cigar store, or cars and coffee. I suspect that most of the survivors – and there are likely many given that a lot of these I think were purchased with the intent of being survivors and hence have lived a pampered life – spend at least some number of days each year in local parades.
I remember discovering Chicago-style pizza in the late 1970s as it made its way to non-Chicago parts of the country. I loved it, despite soon falling in with a mostly NYC crowd once I got to college, and finding that there simply was no such thing as pizza if it didn’t come from NYC. In giant wedge shaped slices. Dripping grease and folded for eating. Pizza is one of those foods that seems to attract iconoclastic points of view.
I have to say that as attractive to me as the taste of Chicago pizza was the style of the restaurants that it was served in. That 1890s brick and tile architecture (which I now know evoked the original Chicago pizza places) of Chicago-style pizza places (like Armand’s in the DC area) has always been a favorite of mine.
Having been to Uno, Due and Giordanos, I have to say I’m a devoted Lou Malnati’s deep dish guy when I get the rare opportunity or reason to be in Chicago these days…nothing better. As far as the Caprice, well, everyone else seems to like it so it won’t go to waste either, but you’d likely find me in the Buick showroom instead although those wheels do put me in mind of an extra large pie!
Car: 1
Wheels: -0!
Nuff said