Pizza.... SLICED!

Yes, I'm new to Chicago. I will confess that it took me nearly three weeks to try the standard Chicago-style deep dish pizza. My neighbor from back home, my late-night walk accomplice, and guy that's been cheering me up when I'm crabby for no reason had been making fun of me regularly for not achieving this milestone since living in the city. While stumbling home drunk following a Balvenie scotch tasting was the perfect setting for me to determine that it was time to pop my cherry (cherry tomato, used for pizza sauce--obviously!). My roomie and I popped into the nearest pizza joint. We promptly ordered local brews to wash over the burning feeling in my chest from the scotch I had just been forced to consume. Is this why they call it, "putting hair on your chest?" Not a fan.

We started our meal with mozzarella sticks, as always because we're fat girls stuck in fabulously slim bodies, and my drunken meal was off to a great start. We were forewarned that our pizza would take about thirty minutes and were enjoying our time sobering up with beers. While we waited, we recapped the evening: six shots of Balvenie, meeting our very own version of Karen Walker from Will&Grace, and, unfortunately I can't remember the rest because of the previously mentioned six shots of scotch. I do not drink scotch, and that is precisely the reason.

As promised, our pizza arrived thirty minutes later and within fifteen seconds it was sliced, plated and almost gone. Drunk munchies? Totally. My first slice of Chicago-style pizza was way better than I anticipated and the restaurant staff was great! My entire slice was almost gone when I felt something pinch the inside of my mouth. A little strange, but I had been drinking an unfamiliar kind of booze so I thought I was crazy. I kept chewing and instead of a little pinch, I felt a sharp pain and my mouth began to warm. You know that feeling when you've had too much to drink and your throat and the roof of your mouth gets warm before you puke? Luckily this wasn't it. That feeling before you cry that your eyes water and your throat tightens? Not it either. So, I choose to do the ladylike thing and spit my food gracefully into a napkin. 

I see red on the linen that isn't pizza sauce or my Chanel lipstain and I realize that it's my blood. I feel around my mouth and sense a little warm liquid on the corner of my lips on the dimple-less side of my face. I have a Cindy Crawford-esque mole that my mom, after twenty four years, insists is chocolate from her famous monster cookies every time she sees me. Anyway, I realize that there is no trace of Chanel, no perfectly seasoned pizza sauce, only fresh blood on my face. 

I want nothing to do with blood unless it involves Alexander Skarsgard as Eric Northman from Trueblood, so I was mortified. I slowly, not-so-sexily, and painfully remove a rigid shard of glass or plastic from my cheek as my best friend sits across from me, speechless. One would assume it's because I'm so attractive at this point but who knows? The waiter stops by our table to innocently inquire how my first slice of Chicago is treating me and he's greeted with a bloody mouth, disgusted gay, and chewed up food folded in a napkin. 

The restaurant comped our entire meal, offered to make a new pizza to send home with us and the manager apologized repeatedly. Was I rushing out the next evening to get another slice of pizza? Definitely not. But I would go back to the restaurant and try the pizza again, only because of the amazing customer service that we received while there. Accidents happen, commercial kitchens are bound to have something unfortunate occur, and I am hailing from a family of accident-prone weirdos, so it only makes sense that the shard of plastic ended up in my mouth after a night of shooting single malt. However, this is partially (read: mostly), my favorite Nebraskan neighbor.

 Needless to say, I ended the night with hair on my chest and blood in my mouth. Thursday night drinking? Not going to happen for a while....well, not until we attend the Macallan Finest Cut event in two weeks. Who am I to turn down free booze, delicious food and making new friends?