MAXWELLS TRADING, WHICH opened in late December in West Town, serves “Chicago food, from children of the city,” according to its website. That raises a question I find of particular interest: What is Chicago food?
“It’s not just hot dogs and pizza,” chef-owner Erling Wu-Bower says with a laugh. “When you are a second-generation [immigrant] child raised in a big city in America, you have this ethnic food life. As a kid, I was awash in Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese food. And when you grow up here, you also go to Devon [Avenue], you eat at Le Bouchon, you eat red-sauce Italian.”
