Art by Kayla Johnson

Hello, and welcome to the first of many food articles to come this year! Each issue, we will look at the best food of a certain variety near to the Saint Viator community, offering ideas for where to go out to eat. If you have any restaurant recommendations for the next issue, please feel free to let Mr. Paolelli or myself know, and I will attempt to incorporate them into the article, but first, I have chosen to write about a classic dish which is available in abundance around Saint Viator, the Italian dish of pizza.

Recently, Naples pizza twirling earned UNESCO world heritage status as an indelible tradition which must be passed on from generation to generation. Neapolitan pizza has thin crust and puffy edges which makes creating the perfect pizza simple, because 90% of pizza is in the dough. Although a bit of a drive from Saint Viator, the restaurant Neoteca in Barrington is the first restaurant to make our list, and although it is a fancier place, the pizza offered is superb, and is more than worth the splurge. For Neapolitan pizza however, there are plenty of other places around, and another restaurant that springs to mind is Portofino’s, located at 383 Northwest Highway in Palatine. Using a wood fire technique, which is visible from any seat in the restaurant, the chefs at Portofino whip up a variety of tasty pies. Although you would expect to wait longer for good food, Neapolitan pizza is only supposed to take 90 seconds to cook, so pizza comes out relatively quick.

If you are in the Arlington Heights area looking for some pizza, downtown Arlington Heights has pizza at Armand’s, which recently moved a block south, locating it right across from Harmony Park. There are plenty of restaurants in this area as well, but we will cover some of these restaurants in other issues. To conclude, I will recommend a restaurant in Chicago, which has the best pizza on the list; Piece pizza. Piece is a lively environment, and during lunch and dinner time, a wait is nearly inevitable, but the wait is made up for by exceptional pizza. If you like spice, I recommend Hot Doug’s Atomic Sausage Pizza, but whatever you order will end up satisfying you and leaving you content.