One Of Chicago's Beloved Pizza Creations Is Nearly Impossible To Find Anywhere Else

Chicago has a reputation as one of the best food cities in America, but despite the city's well-documented love of local favorites like deep-dish and Italian beef, there is a "pizza" specialty there that many people don't know about. Pizza is in quotes there because even compared to the unusual deep-dish offerings, this snack stretches the definition of the word and isn't even on the menu at most Windy City pizza joins. Instead, it's a staple of hot dog stands and local fast food joints. It's been overshadowed for years by foods more stereotypically associated with Chicago, but if you live outside the area, it's time you were introduced to the pizza puff.

Unlike hot dogs or even deep-dish, pizza puffs are rarely seen on menus outside of the Chicagoland area, but for the uninitiated they are comparable to a Hot Pocket or an oversized Totino's Pizza Roll. Yet even those related foods don't quite do it justice. There are similar fillings, sauce, mozzarella cheese, sausage, peppers, or pepperoni, but the exterior is crispy and flaky in a way those relatives aren't. In fact, the best comparison is probably a pizza-filled chimichanga, because pizza puffs are actually made by wrapping the filling in a tortilla and then deep frying.

Despite being quite heavy, they are typically listed as sides on local menus. While Totino's did beat them to the punch by several years, pizza puffs are a Chicago original created to serve a very specific kind of local clientele.

Believe it or not, this modern convenience food has a history dating back almost a hundred years. While the pizza puff wasn't created until the '70s, its genesis starts with an Iranian-Assyrian immigrant named Elisha Shabaz. He started working with a local Chicago tamale vendor to create Illinois Tamale Company in 1927, selling their product to hot dog stands as a menu addition.

In the '60s, his grandson Warren Shabaz took over, renaming the company Iltaco (a portmanteau of Illinois and taco). A decade later, local pizza places were rapidly expanding in Chicago, and the hot dog stands Iltaco was already working with wanted something handheld that they could compete with. So, inspired by local calzones, Shabaz came up with a tortilla-wrapped pizza puff that could be deep fried. The product went into circulation in 1976.

To this day, Iltaco is still the primary producer of the majority of pizza puffs sold around Chicago. Iltaco's puffs are all folded by hand with a filling made from scratch, giving them a big leg up over other mass-market products like Hot Pockets. While it's hard to ignore the allure of a Chicago-style hot dog, you should try to save some room for the truly local pizza puff as well. Byron's Hot Dogs on Irving Park in Lakeview, Grassano's in suburban Oak Lawn, and Munchie P's out in Geneva are local favorites, but pop into any hot dog stand and they are sure to be good.