You know that thing where you sign up for a new gig, meet a whole new crew of people, and within a few weeks you’re all sitting in a restaurant together like you’ve known each other since third grade? That was this week. One full week in Glenview, Illinois — which is basically Chicago’s well-behaved suburban cousin — doing training, eating too much, and squeezing in just enough adventure to make the flight home feel well-earned. The Accidental Summer Camp Now, let me start by saying I hadn’t spent much time with this team before. I knew names, seen a faces  for a month on Teams, but that was about it. Funny thing about being stuck in a hotel together for a week of classes, though — you start feeling like you’re in adult summer camp. Same people every day, inside jokes start forming, everyone’s half-exhausted and half-slap-happy by midweek, and next thing you know you’re swapping stories over dinner like lifelong friends. It’s a weird but kind of awesome part of this job — these min...

Let’s get one thing straight right from the top: being from New York comes with an unspoken rule — we believe we’ve cracked the code on pizza. Not just “good pizza.” The pizza. The slice you fold. The slice you eat while walking. The slice you can get at 2 a.m. from a guy named Vinny who’s been making them since the Reagan administration. Paper plate. Grease drip. The whole sacred ritual. So whenever someone outside of New York brings up pizza — and they always do — there’s this inevitable reply: “Yeah, but have you had Chicago pizza?” And here’s where my internal monologue starts revving up like a cab driver approaching the Midtown Tunnel at rush hour. But I’m a grown-up now (or at least pretending to be one), and I told myself on this trip to Chicago that I would approach this like an adult professional. Be open-minded. Try new things. Learn. Explore. Maybe even embrace a different pizza culture. The Deep Dish Experience We started, of course, with the legendary deep ...