Welcome to The Party Cut
About goddamn time, huh?
Hi!
I’m Dennis. I’ve been a Chicago-based food writer for over a decade, and during that time I’ve done some pretty marvelous stuff like work in a pizza kitchen, write for lots of publications (I’m currently at a cool site called The Takeout), and I’ve even won a few small awards here and there. Oh yeah, and I have another Substack newsletter called Food is Stupid, which I’m sure a handful of you have seen before.
I have stuck to this career path for so long because of my love of food (obviously), but also because it allows me to share cool things with you. My experience as a cook, though it wasn’t easy, gave me a brand new perspective, mad skills, and a whole new set of friends. Where I was once a long-time admirer of kitchen folk, suddenly I found myself cooking in the same sphere as them.
Part of the fun of working with food in any capacity is eating it, of course. While my fiancée Davida and I don’t go out a ton these days, I still have this massive catalog of valuable information about Chicago’s culinary scene squirreled away in my head.
I’ve noticed that people have been asking me about Chicago’s restaurant scene more often lately. Every time I post a photo on Instagram, I’ll get a flurry of questions and direct messages. Though I try my best to do each place justice via a short photo caption, it’s not quite enough to convey how much I love each and every one of them.
So I’ve started yet another newsletter, this one, to document those places that make Chicago’s dining scene so great. It’s called The Party Cut because some of my favorite pizza is “party-cut,” meaning, it’s cut into squares, which makes it best for sharing with everyone you love.
I have to stress this right now: This isn’t me being a food critic.
I don’t want that. All I want is to show you the places we’ve been and the stuff we’ve particularly enjoyed. If I can, I’ll introduce you to some of the people behind it as I go along, but really, I’ll mainly stick to the food and keep it short and sweet.
And yes, there’ll be paid content. Every other edition will be behind a paywall, and that’s not to keep stuff gated from you, but in the hopes you can help support me to keep this thing running. Since it’s just me and Davida, I also won’t be sampling everything off every menu we run across; I’m just going to shout general praises for the stuff we’ve tried and can vouch for.
I also won’t be writing about brand new places; I have plenty of peer friends who take care of that aspect for you in Chicago’s online food community, including journalists, influencers, TV personalities, and more. It’s not the shiny new restaurants that need a spotlight all the time, it’s also the ones you may have forgotten about along the way, or never discovered in the first place. If you’d like to pitch in too, just holler. You’ve probably got better taste than me anyway.
So if you’re new here, hello, and if you already know me, then you know pretty much what to expect. Just a lot of good food, a bunch of friendly horsing around, and an excuse to go out for something good to eat.
Speaking of, let’s get started.
Dennis
