Obamatime: What is Obama’s Favorite Food?

What is Obama’s Favorite Food?

During a recent strategy meeting, I was advised by Alyx Skadden that “[a]ccording to Barack Obama in an interview on 1/18/2008 his favorite food is from Italian Fiesta Pizzeria in Hyde Park, Chicago, IL.” (source: many online refs, including this one) So last night, curious as to what the future leader of the free world most likes to eat, I paid a visit to Italian Fiesta Pizzeria. Some preparatory googling showed that it was located at 1400 E. 47th St., right in Hyde Park, which is on the South Side.

There are essentially two parts of Hyde Park: The white part where University of Chicago students live and congregate, and the black part, i.e., everywhere else (which includes both rough ghetto, and gentrified sections of ritzy mansions housing the likes of Louis Farrakhan). Italian Fiesta sits in a strip mall just off Lake Shore Drive, pretty much in the DMZ between those two worlds, and is equipped accordingly. The interior is pretty sparse, just three folding chairs where you can wait for your pizza (take-out only) while it’s being prepared behind the bulletproof glass, through which you place your order. In this picture below, taken with my cell phone, you can see where the glass is spidered from a small-caliber bullet. Interestingly, the shot seems to have been fired from inside the kitchen. Maybe they turned the glass around afterwards. I dunno.

You can see handwritten sign in the picture above that Italian Fiesta Pizzeria refers to itself as “I.F.P.,” which I suppose is in keeping with its environs. And consider: Italian Fiesta, all black, in a strip mall next door to a famed university of the honkey scions of the academic left (and economic neo-right). Of course this is Obama’s favorite food. It’s Fucking Perfect. The place is as polyglot as Obama and his promise.

I was originally going to order a large pepperoni, but then I thought, would a Secret Muslim do that? Fuck no. So I got a 14″ ground beef instead ($13) and a can of RC ($.65), and took my meal back up to Ravenswood to put it to the test:

And seriously –this is some of the best pizza I have ever had in Chicago, or anywhere else. Not Chicago style, or New York style, but Midwestern style: Thin, lightly-dusted, crisp flaky crust, cut in squares, with slightly sweet sauce. The kind of pizza you seem to only find at mom and pop shops in working class parts of Ohio, Indiana, Iowa … It was truly delicious, every bite an optimistic reminder of better things to come. This is what I will be eating when I watch the results come in on November 4.