Chicago calls itself the Second City.
We named it that. A. J. Liebling wrote the essays for The New Yorker and collected them in 1952 under the title Chicago: The Second City, and he did not mean it kindly. He was a New Yorker stuck in the Midwest and he filed a book-length complaint about it. Chicago has been carrying his insult around for seventy-four years like a trophy it won. It has also been the third-largest city in the country since the 1990 census, which makes the nickname both an attack and out of date.
Then it went further. In 1959 a comedy theater took the name off the cover and put it on a marquee, and the reclamation was complete. The insult became a compliment, then a brand, then a tote bag. It is a genuinely impressive act of civic jiu-jitsu. It is also the reason nobody in Chicago ever read the rest of the book.
THE MAN WHO NAMED CHICAGO ALSO SAID IT HAD NO DECENT RESTAURANTS
Here is where the joke turns on us.
Liebling itemized what he thought Chicago lacked. An opera company. Talented writers. Sports worth believing in. Reliable garbage collection. Water that tasted like anything. And decent restaurants. He wrote that from downtown, six miles south of a street where the honorary signs change nationality every few blocks. Devon Avenue runs as Muhammad Ali Jinnah Way, then Gandhi Marg, then Golda Meir Boulevard, with Sheikh Mujib Way to the east. One street. Four countries of signage. Our guy never got on the train.
He also predicted Chicago would lose second place to Los Angeles, which it did, forty years after he called it. He was early on the ranking and wrong about the food. History gave him one out of two.
FOUR ADDRESSES ON ONE STREET, ALL OF THEM SIX MILES NORTH OF DOWNTOWN
So skip the Loop. Get to Devon.
Ghareeb Nawaz, 2032 W Devon Avenue. Cash only, open past midnight, and the cheapest good meal in the city by a wide margin. Halwa puri in the morning. Order more than you think you need, because you can afford to.
Khan B.B.Q., 2401 W Devon Avenue. Tandoori and boti, a plain room, and no apparent interest in becoming a nicer one. Families have been eating three generations deep in that dining room. The fixtures are the point.
Sabri Nihari, 2502 W Devon Avenue. Order the nalli nihari. People fly in for it and then argue on the internet about whether it is the best in North America, which is a good sign about the nihari and a bad sign about the internet.
Uru-Swati, 2629 W Devon Avenue. Vegetarian, and the paper dosa arrives longer than the table. Bring somebody. Do not order it alone and then pretend you finished it.
Four addresses. All four on the same street. Not one of them downtown, not one of them in a hotel, and every one of them serving the food the man who named your city said you did not have.
Chicago, the nickname is fine. Keep it. It suits a city that would rather be called second by New York than first by anyone else. But you spent seventy-four years arguing with a book review and never checked the part where he said the food was bad. He was wrong about that. It is the only thing worth being loud about.
Keep the name. We are keeping the ranking.
SOURCING
Daniel Hautzinger, WTTW Chicago, December 15, 2022, on A. J. Liebling's Second City essays, his list of what Chicago lacked, and his prediction that Los Angeles would overtake it. wttw.com
Britannica, on the origin and popularization of the Second City nickname in Liebling's 1952 book. britannica.com
NBC Chicago, on the most recent Census population figures placing Chicago third. nbcchicago.com
Chicago Reader, on the honorary designations along Devon Avenue and the block ranges each one covers. chicagoreader.com
Writers Theatre, on the history of Devon Avenue and the sequence of communities along it. writerstheatre.org
Operator addresses and current operating status confirmed August 17, 2026.
