Freddy’s Pizza: Cicero’s Timeless, Humble Jewel [with Photo Gallery]

Freddy’s Pizza, photo: David Hammond

Sopressata pizza, photo: David Hammond

Involtini, photo: David Hammond

Behind the counter at Freddy’s, photo: David Hammond

I’d forgotten that to walk into Freddy’s Pizza at lunchtime is to be momentarily and delightfully bewildered. There are people standing around, and some are paying for food, and others are giving orders, which they then pick up at various locations along the front deli counter. There are a two lines of people winding around the grocery shelves, butting up against each other all across the front of the hot table, two throngs of people who, despite the lack of a clear queue, seem to politely know when it’s their turn to order, and then after a respectful pause, take their food and pay. 

This hungry mass of humanity is ordering things like involtini (slices of eggplant rolled around veal with peas), pizza topped with the usual cheese/sauce/sausage accoutrements as well as a few odd options (e.g., fried calamari), porchetta sandwiches (thin sliced pork on bread), sautéed rapini (Italian broccoli), batter-fried artichoke hearts, salads of beans and tomato mozzarella, seafood and many, many other good-looking edibles. 

Along the far wall is a mound of many different but all beautiful Italian breads, some of which are sliced for sandwiches, others of which go home whole with many of the hundreds of people who pass through the doors of this place every day: old Italian grannies, cops, construction workers, neighborhood guys, wise guys, moms with kids, random visitors like me and, the day I was there, a film crew from New York that was there to document what is likely a disappearing breed: the neighborhood Italian-American grocery/deli/hot table. 

Freddy’s is a good place to visit any time of year, but there’s something about it that I find especially Christmas-appropriate. Maybe it’s all the deep red colors (sausage, sauce, etc.) and greens (rapini, salad, etc.), though there’s also the extremely homey and welcoming nature of all who work there. 

Visiting Freddy’s last week, I had the involtini and a slice of sopressata pizza, and while we sat in the little enclosed eating structure (constructed maybe 8 or so years ago to accommodate dining in), at least three employees, including both the husband and wife who own the place, came by to ask if everything was okay, how’s the food, can I get you anything, how about more napkins?  Nice. 

If you’ve never been to Freddy’s, there’s really no good reason why you haven’t. This tiny place, Cicero’s humble jewel, has been featured in the Sun-Times and Tribune, television shows like “Check, Please!” and “Chicago’s Best,” Steve Dolinksy’s ABC segment “The Hungry Hound,” and it’s been visited by Bobby Flay and other big names. None of this media attention seems to have changed the basic customer service orientation and the genuinely open and friendly attitudes of owners Joe and Anna Marie Quercia. 

And that’s another one of the other things I like about this place: it’s timeless, unchanged by fame, chugging along the same as it ever was, doing what it does best. Freddy’s hasn’t bought all the spaces next door and turned itself into an Eataly-type place; it hasn’t hired a battalion of servers and set up a dining room; heck, they haven’t even upgraded the efficiency of the queuing systems, and why should they? It’s successful. It’s working. Don’t mess with it. Such quirks give the place character. 

Another quirk that I find charming is that some canned goods are on shelves behind the counter, so that you have to ask for them, just as you would at an old-timey general store: very inefficient but endearing, and my guess is that the Quercia family needs the extra space to display retail products.

There’s a lot of fancy Italian food out, and you can find haute chow from the Boot at places like the venerable Spiaggia and Nico Osteria, posh joints where you can easily drop a few hundred per person on dinner with wine. Wine you will not find at Freddy’s, and a regular lunch will likely come in around $10 (not counting gelato, which you should definitely try; it’s cool the way the Quercias keep experimenting with new flavors). The food itself might strike some as almost under-seasoned, but a lot of food in Italy struck me the same way: it’s fundamentally peasant food, carbs and sauce with some vegetables and maybe some meat. In much of Italy, as at Freddy’s, they’re using good ingredients and treating them gently, the better to coax out their natural goodness. 

With the holidays here, you may have friends visiting from out of town. For a colorful and warm dining experience, lunch or dinner, take home Freddy’s food or take all your guests to out Freddy’s.  This is the kind of place that out-of-towners will talk about long after the holiday warmth cools. It’s a place that knows exactly what it is and that has no intention of changing: a classic.

Freddy’s Pizza

1600 S. 61^st

Cicero

708-863-9289