My Favorite Local Restaurant

To be completely honest, I don't know of that many local restaurants. Isn't that awful? Most of the time when I go out to eat it's either Chipotle or Portillos. (Which... some Chicago people might want to argue Portillos is local because most of their chains are here and it's a Chicago staple. But it's a chain.) Even living in Missouri, one of my favorite places was McCallisters... another chain. I do go to local restaurants, I do. But it takes me a little while to think of one I really would want to share with the world. I clearly need to get out more.

The one place I did think of though is this Pizza/Itallian place in the suburb where I grew up. I guess technically it's a chain now because there are a couple of other locations which have popped up in the last several years around the south side of Chicago. However, it started where I grew up and it was just a local family place for a long time.

Barraco's Pizza.

This place is a staple for anyone who grew up in my neighborhood. I first know it for it's pizza. I can't tell you how many times we would order pizza from here on a Friday night. Pizza Hut? Poppa Johns? Pssshhh. Barraco's is where it's at yo.

They also have a dinning room where you can of course order pizza, but it's actually a nice Itallian restaurant along with a banquet hall and a bar. I've had countless dinners, graduations, and other celebrations here. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the location for my sister's rehearsal dinner.

I actually really hate this picture of me, but in college I brought the cast of a play I was in here for our cast party. I would have chosen a different picture which actually showed the restaurant, but this was the only one with me in it and I felt like it would be creepy to put up pictures of my college friends without me. So... there we go. There's this awesome one of my friend next to a Frank Sinatra picture because that's the kind of Italian place it is. 

What makes Baracco's even better is you can order and carry out anything on the menu. So many times we don't feel like eating pizza, so we'll just order a bunch of appetizers, a roast beef sandwich, and pasta. It's amazeballs. 

Then... it gets better. Carry out and delivery is open 24 hours. Yup. The dinning room is open until 2am, but you can order Baracco's 24/7. My brother-in-law loves it for when he has late night shifts and needs something to eat as he gets home. 

So... now I'm craving it. Ordering Italian is okay for 7:30am right?

Blog Every Day in July Topic: My Favorite Local Restaurant