Chicago Food Tour – the unauthorised version.

We had heard about food tours from our friends Jeff and Janet and really wanted to do them, but when we looked at them online realised that they were quite expensive. However, the food tour website listed the places that they were going – so we decided to do our own Olson unauthorised food tour!

Our first stop was in Oldtown at Delightful Pastries, where we tried pirogies, a Polish kind of dumpling served with bacon and onion.  These were delicious!

Our next stop was The Spice House, which smelled amazing and had row after row of spices for tasting.  We spent a lot of time here sampling different spices and bought a few to take with us on our journey.

We walked next door to Old Town Oil and tried different oils and vinegars – sadly we couldn’t really take any of these with us!

The Fudge Pot was next, and while we didn’t purchase any fudge we found something even better – lollipops that you could get your name written on!

Our next stop was Ashkenaz deli, where we tried a Reuben sandwich for the first time. A Reuben is corned beef, cheese and sauerkraut – we weren’t sure about it but it ended up being delicious.

The next stop was supposed to be deep dish pizza, but since we had already tried it we had a coffee interlude then headed to Tea Gschwendner, where we sampled some tea and bought some to take home.

We had a fabulous day eating our way around Chicago, and wound up doing the whole day for less than the cost of one of us doing the official tour, as well as spending lots more time in each shop. A great day!