August 25, 2011 | 2,009 Comments

Feasting Fort Collins On The Road – Chicago’s Best

When we venture out of Fort Collins into an unfamiliar city, we typically do one of two things when making a decision on where to eat.

Play Restaurant Roulette and pick a place at random (often The Husband’s preferred decision-making option).
Pull up the Yelp mobile app on my phone to find a place with a high rating that is relatively close.

When we go on major road trips or overnight weekend getaways (like Denver), I make sure to thoroughly research restaurants so that we are bound to have an enjoyable meal. If we are just going on a quick day trip, we utilize the two decision making tools.

Well, that’s all going to change now. I cannot count how many times we’ve been let down by peer review sites and picking at random. Yelp could easily be one of the biggest letdowns when it comes to relying on peers for their opinion, as it seems so many have horrible taste and a public platform to manipulate. But, I continue to use the app because of the Geoloaction function. Results are just as horrific by pointing a finger to any old place. The worst city to do this in is Estes Park. We have failed miserably at finding decent places to eat there, and the worst experience by far has been at Chicago’s Best.

Chicago’s Best is a family-owned pizza parlor on the main drag in downtown Estes Park – tourist trap central. We happened to go in there based on the Yelp reviews. It’s a small space that looks a bit dingy, but with recently painted murals on the walls which capture the beauty of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Since we were there for lunch and they were making fresh pizza, we opted for pizza slices for the family (especially since we weren’t taking an entire pie back to Fort Collins and nobody likes the same type of pizza in our family). The kids had cheese pizza slices, The Husband had a pepperoni slice, and I had a vegetable slice.

This was equivalent to cafeteria pizza. Flavorless pizza that was worse than the frozen pizza we had in our freezer back home. The very worst part – and something that I’ve never, ever tasted in all of my years of eating pizza – the cheese quality was so poor that it disintegrated in my mouth. It was the same texture as over-chewed gum with its broken down structure, and it reminded me most of a breath freshening dissolve strip, melting in a way that left a greasy film. It was this way on every single slice we ordered.

The service was average and it did take quite a bit of time for us to actually get our pizza, but we waited patiently because we were getting freshly baked pizza. Sadly, we were served freshly baked crappy pizza with the worst cheese I’ve consumed to date.

While we use Restaurant Roulette and Yelp’s mobile app to help make dining decisions in unfamiliar cities – it’s ending now. I have made a plan of a attack for the next time we visit Estes Park with researched places to review. And? I’m totally going to have a mobile app designed for Feasting Fort Collins readers. Hopefully it’s a hell of a lot more reliable than Yelp’s app.

Chicago’s Best
112 West Elkhorn
Estes Park, Colorado
(970) 586-4796
no website available

Kid-Friendly? Yes

Parking: Parking lot behind the main drag

Healthy Options? There is a vegetarian option

Budget-Friendly? Absolutely – most meals are under $6

Recent Health Inspection: Good